PRINCIPLES 


SOCIAL    SCIENCE. 


-PRINCIPLES 


SOCIAL    SCIENCE-. 


BY 


H.    C.    CAEEY. 


IN    THREE   VOLUMES. 

VOL.  I. 


PHILADELPHIA: 
J.    B.    LIPPINCOTT    &    CO 

LONDON:  — TRUBNER   &    CO. 

PAKIS:  —  GUILLAUMIN  &  CO. 

1858. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1858,  "by 

II.    C.    CAREY, 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  Eastern  District  of 

Pennsylvania. 


PREFACE. 


THE  work  now  offered  for  consideration,  will  speak  for 
itself;  but  its  readers  will,  perhaps,  excuse  its  author,  if, 
for  a  few  moments,  he  asks  their  attention  to  matters  of 
little  interest  to  any  but  himself. 

Of  the  principles  here  enunciated,  some  now  make  their 
appearance  for  the  first  time ;  whereas,  others  were  first 
published,  twenty  years  ago.*  Since  then,  the  latter  have 
reappeared  in  another  work,  by  a  distinguished  French 
economist,!  which  —  its  circulation  having  been  extensive 

—  has  been  read  by  thousands,  who  have  never  seen  the 
volumes,  in  which  the  same  ideas  had  previously  been 
published.     Finding,  here,  a  repetition  of  what  they  had 
read    elsewhere,    and    given    without    acknowledgment, 
those  persons  would,  most  naturally,  be  disposed  to  sus 
pect  the   present   author   of    having   wrongfully   appro 
priated  the  property  of  another;  when,  in  point  of  fact, 
he  was,  himself,  the  real  owner.     This  would  be  an  un 
pleasant  state  of  things ;  and,  as  the  only  mode  by  which 
it   can   be   avoided,  he  deems  it  well   to  make,  on  this 
occasion,  a  brief  statement  of  the  order  of  discovery,  of 
the  various  new  ideas  contained  in  the  following  pages. 

The  theory  of  value,  as  now  given,  was  first  published 
in  1837.  Being  very  simple,  it  was  very  comprehensive 

—  embracing  every  commodity,  or  thing,  in  reference  to 
which  the  jiiea  of  value  could  exist — whether  land,  labor, 
or  their  products.     This  was  one  step  towards  establish- 

*  CAREY:  Principles  of  Political  Economy.     Philad.,  1887-1840.  " 
f  BASTIAT:  Humaines  Economiques.     Paris,  1850. 

(iii) 


IV  PREFACE. 

ing  the  universality  of  natural  laws  —  the  value  of  land 
having  been  ascribed,  by  all  previous  economists,  to 
causes  widely  different  from  those  which  gave  value  to 
its  products.* 

Consequent  upon  this,  was  the  discovery  of  a  general 
law  of  distribution  —  embracing  all  the  products  of  labor, 
whether  that  applied  to  cultivation  or  conversion  —  to 
change  of  place  or  form.  According  to  the  theories  then 
most  generally  received,  the  profit  of  one,  was  always 
attended  with  loss  to  another — rents  rising,  as  labor 
became  less  productive,  and  profits  advancing,  as  wages 
retrograded  —  a  doctrine  that,  if  true,  tended  to  the  pro 
duction  of  universal  discord;  and  that,  too,  as  the  natural 
consequence  of  a  great  law,  instituted  by  the  Deity  for 
man's  government,  f 

\  *  "Carey,  and  after  him  Bastiat,  have  introduced  a  formula,  &  posteriori, 
that  I  believe  destined  to  be  universally  adopted ;  and  it  is  greatly  to  be 
regretted  that  the  latter  should  have  limited  himself  to  occasional  indica 
tions  of  it,  instead  of  giving  to  it  the  importance  so  justly  given  by  the 
former.  In  estimating  the  equilibrium  between  the  cost  to  one's  self  and 
the  utility  to  others,  a  thousand  circumstances  may  intervene ;  and  it  is 
desirable  to  know  if  there  be  not  among  men  a  law,  a  principle  of  universal 
application.  Supply  and  demand,  rarity,  abundance,  etc.,  are  all  insuffi 
cient,  and  liable  to  perpetual  exceptions.  Carey  has  remarked,  and  with 
great  sagacity,  that  this  law  is  the  labor  saved,  the  cost  of  reproduction  — 
an  idea  that  is,  as  I  think,  most  felicitous.  It  appears  to  me  that  there 
cannot  arise  a  case,  in  which  a  man  shall  determine  to  make  an  exchange, 
in  which  this  law  will  not  be  found  to  apply.  I  will  not  give  a  quantity 
of  labor  or  pains,  unless  offered  in  exchange  an  utility  equivalent;  and  I 
will  not  regard  it  as  equivalent,  unless  I  see  that  it  will  come  to  me  at  less 
cost  of  labor  than  would  be  necessary  for  its  reproduction.  I  regard  this 
formula  as  most  felicitous ;  because,  while  on  one  side  it  retains  the  idea 
of  cost,  which  is  constantly  referred  to  in  the  mind,  on  the  other  it  avoids 
the  absurdity  to  which  we  are  led  by  the  theory,  which  pretends  to  see 
;  everywhere  a  value  equivalent  to  the  cost  of  production ;  and,  finally,  it 
shows  more  perfectly  the  essential  justice  that  governs  us  in  our  exchanges." 
.TT-FERR.ARA:  Biblioteca  degV  JSconomista,  vol.  xii.  p.  117. 

•}•  "  Low  wages,  as  a  consequence  of  competition  for  the  sale  of  Labor, 
reduce  the  prices  of  the  things  to  the  production  of  which  that  labor  is 
applied ;  and  it  is  the  consumers  of  those  products,  the  whole  society,  that 
reap  the  profit.  If,  then,  as  a  consequence  of  low  wages,  the  latter  find 
themselves  obliged  to  contribute  to  the  support  of  the  poor  workman,  they 
are  indemnified  therefor  by  the  reduced  prices  at  which  they  obtain  his 
products."—  J.  B.  SAY:  Traite  d'Economie  Politigue,  t.  11,  p.  292. 

It  is  here  supposed  that  society  profits  by  a  state  of  things,  that  impove 
rishes  the  workman,  and  sends  him  to  the  hospital.  The  interests  of  the 
employer  and  his  workmen  being  the  same,  such  a  state  of  things  could  not 
exist. 


PREFACE. 


Directly  the  reverse  of  this,  however,  was  the  law  that 
was  then  published,  and  now  is  reproduced  —  proving,  as 
it  did,  that  both  capitalist  and  laborer  profited  by  every 
measure  tending  to  render  labor  more,  while  losing  by 
every  one  that  tended  to  render  it  less,  productive  —  and 
thus  establishing  a  perfect  harmony  of  interests. 

Thoroughly  persuaded  of  the  truth  of  the  laws  then 
presented  for  consideration,  the  author  felt  not  less  cer 
tain,  that  the  really  fundamental  law  remained  yet  to  be 
discovered ;  and  that,  until  it  could  be  brought  to  light, 
many  of  the  phenomena  of  society  must  continue  unex 
plained.  In  what  direction,  however,  to  seek  it,  he  could 
not  tell.  He  had  already  satisfied  himself,  that  the  theory 
presented  for  consideration  by  Mr.  Ricardo  —  not  being 
universally  true  —  had  no  claim  to  be  so  considered;  but, 
it  was  not  until  ten  years  later,  that  he  was  led  to  remark 
the  fact,  that  it  was  universally  false.  The  real  law,  as 
he  then  saw,  was  directly  the  reverse  of  that  propounded 
by  that  gentleman  —  the  work  of  cultivation  having,  and 
that  invariably,  been  commenced  on  the  poorer  soils,  and 
having  passed  to  the  richer  ones,  as  wealth  had  grown, 
and  population  had  increased.  Here  was  the  great  fun 
damental  truth,  of  which  he  before  had  thought,  and  the 
one,  too,  that  was  needed  for  the  perfect  demonstration 
of  the  truth  of  those  he  previously  had  published.  Here, 
too,  was  further  proof  of  the  universality  of  natural  laws 
—  the  course  of  man,  in  reference  to  the  earth  itself, 
being  thus  found  to  have  been  the  same  that  we  see  it 
to  have  been,  in  reference  to  all  the  instruments  into 
which  he  fashions  parts  of  the  great  machine  itself. 
Always  commencing  with  the  poorest  axes,  he  proceeds 
onward  to  those  of  steel :  always  commencing  with  the 
poorer  soils,  he  proceeds  onward  to  those  richer  ones 
which  yield  the  largest  return  to  labor  —  the  increase  of 
numbers  being,  thus,  proved  to  be  essential  to  in 
crease  in  the  supply  of  food.  Here  was  a  harmony  of  * 


VI  PREFACE. 

interests,  directly  opposed  to  the  discords  taught  by  Mr. 
Malthus. 

This  great  law  was  first  announced  now  ten  years 
since.*  While  engaged  in  its  demonstration,  the  author 
found  himself  constantly  impelled  to  the  use  of  physical 
facts,  in  illustration  of  social  phenomena,  and  hence  was 
led  to  remark  the  close  affinity  of  physical  and  social 
laws.  Reflecting  upon  this,  he  soon  was  brought  to  the 
expression  of  the  belief,  that  closer  examination  would 
lead  to  the  development  of  the  great  fact,  that  there 
existed  but  a  single  system  of  laws  —  those  instituted  for 
the  government  of  matter,  in  the  form  of  clay  and  sand, 
proving  to  be  the  same  by  which  that  matter  was 
governed,  when  it  took  the  form  of  man,  or  of  commu 
nities  of  men. 

In  the  work  then  published,  the  discoveries  of  modern 
science,  proving  the  indestructibility  of  matter,  were,  for 
the  first  time,  rendered  available  to  social  science  —  the 
difference  between  agriculture  and  all  other  of  the  pur 
suits  of  man,  having  then  been  exhibited  in  the  fact,  that 
the  farmer  was  always  employed  in  making  a  machine, 
whose  powers  increased  from  year  to  year ;  whereas,  the 
shipmaster,  and  the  wagoner,  were  always  using  ma 
chines,  whose  powers  as  regularly  diminished.  The  whole 
business  of  the  former,  as  there  was  shown,  consisted  in 
making*  and  improving  soils  —  his  powers  of  improvement 
growing  with  the  growth  of  wealth  and  population.  To 
fully  develop  the  law  of  the  perpetuity  of  matter,  in  its 
bearing  upon  the  law  of  population,  was,  however,  re 
served  for  the  author's  friend,  Mr.  E.  Peshine  Smith, 
numerous  extracts  from  whose  excellent  little  Manual, 
will  be  found  in  the  present  volume. 

The  great  and  really  fundamental  law  of  the  science — 
the  one  required  for  the  demonstration  of  the  identity  of 
physical  and  social  laws,  still,  however,  remained  to  be 

*  The  Past,  the  Present,  and  the  Future.     Philad.,  1848. 


PREFACE.  Vll 


discovered ;  but,  it  is  now,  as  the  author  thinks,  given  in 
the  second  chapter  of  the  present  volume.  In  the  third,  ' 
will  be  found  the  law  developed  by  Mr.  Smith.  The 
fourth  gives  that  of  the  occupation  of  the  earth,  as  pub 
lished  ten  years  since  —  those  of  value  and  distribution, 
published  ten  years  earlier,  following,  in  chapters  five 
and  six.  The  order  here  required  for  their  proper  exhi 
bition,  is  thus,  as  the  reader  sees,  precisely  the  inverse 
one  of  their  discovery  —  thus  proving  the  truth  of  the 
idea,  that  first  principles  are  always  last  to  be  discovered. 
It  remains  now  to  say  a  few  words,  in  regard  to  the 
course  of  investigation  hitherto  pursued  by  the  author, 
and  here  continued.  The  most  cursory  glance  at  the 
several  portions  of  the  world,  enables  us  to  see,  that  all 
the  stages  of  civilization  in  the  past,  may  be  found  exist 
ing  in  the  present;  and  that,  if  we  would  understand  the 
former,  we  can  do  so  only  by  studying  the  latter  —  thus 
following  in  the  path  that  has  so  long  been  trodden  by 
the  teachers  of  physical  science.  Doing  this,  it  has,  of 
course,  been  necessary  to  examine  carefully  the  move 
ments  of  various  leading  European  communities,  and 
especially  those  of  France  arid  England  —  the  first  being 
the  one  in  which  originated  the  doctrine  of  over-popula 
tion,  and  the  last,  that  of  the  European  nations  by  which 
the  peace  of  the  world  has  most  frequently  been  disturbed. 
As  a  consequence  of  this,  it  has  been,  that  he  has  been 
charged  with  hostility  to  both  —  his  motives  being  thus 
impugned,  by  those  who  have  found  it  inconvenient  to 
undertake  to  show,  that  his  facts  could  not  be  received 
as  true,  or,  that  his  reasoning  was  not  warranted  by  the 
facts.  The  charge,  however,  carries  with  itself  its  re 
futation.  Had  he  been  so  injudicious,  as  to  permit 
himself  to  be  led  to  misstate  the  facts,  or  to  draw  from 
them  inferences  they  did  not  warrant,  he  would  thereby 
have  laid  himself  so  entirely  at  the  mercy  of  his  re 
viewers,  as  wholly  to  free  the  latter  from  any  necessity 


Vlii  PREFACE. 

for  inquiring  into  the  motives  by  which  he  had  been 
actuated. 

If  he  knows  himself  at  all,  he  has  been  prompted  by  a 
single  motive,  the  desire  to  find  the  truth ;  and  that  he 
really  has  been  so,  would  seem  to  be  proved  by  the  fact, 
that,  not  only  has  he  never  been  charged  with  any  mis 
representation  of  the  arguments  of  his  opponents,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  has,  on  more  than  one  occasion,  been 
complimented,  on  the  perfect  accuracy  with  which  they 
have  been  given.  Widely  different,  he  regrets  to  say, 
has  been  the  course  pursued  by  those  to  whom  he  has 
been  opposed  —  his  views  having,  most  generally,  been 
first  misstated,  as  preparation  for  their  refutation.  In 
future,  however,  he  hopes  that  a  different  course  will  be 
pursued,  and  that  his  reviewers  will  bear  in  mind,  that, 
"  notwithstanding  the  pretensions  so  frequently  put  for 
ward  by  politicians  and  economists,  some  of  the  most 
interesting  portions  of  the  sciences  they  profess,  are  still 
imperfectly  understood ;"  while  "  the  important  art  of  ap 
plying  them  to  the  affairs  of  mankind,  so  as  to  produce  the 
greatest  amount  of  permanent  good,  has  made  but  little 
progress,  and  is  hardly,  indeed,  in  its  infancy."* 

Doubting  the  accuracy  of  the  view  that  is  thus  pre 
sented,  of  the  present  state  of  economical  science,  let  them 
next  turn  to  the  work  of  one  of  the  most  eminent  of 
modern  economists,  to  find  him  asking,  if  it  is  matter 
for  surprise  that,  "amid  such  conflicting  claims,  such 
opposing  exigencies,  such  an  inextricable  mass  of  truth 
and  error,  the  science  has  halted  —  that  it  has  only  felt 
its  way  —  that  its  gait  has  been  tottering  and  doubtful  ?"f 
To  him,  it  was  not.  Seeing  the  mists  in  which  the  science 
was  enveloped,  he  declared  his  determination  to  try  "not 
to  add  darkness"  to  the  exceeding  darkness  that,  as  he 
declared,  so  obviously  existed.  These  are  the  acknow- 

*  McCuLLOCH :  Principles.     Preface.     Third  edition, 
f  Rossi :   Cours  cTticonomie  Politique,  t.  ii,  p.  14. 


PREFACE.  IX 

ledgments  of  men  who  have  earned  high  positions  among 
the  teachers  of  social  science ;  and  yet,  among  their  fol 
lowers,  there  are  men  of  comparatively  small  experience, 
who  treat  with  supreme  contempt  the  suggestion  of  any 
new  idea  !* 

To  all  such  persons,  the  author  would  desire  to  suggest 
consideration  of  the  fact,  that,  in  every  department  of 
knowledge,  the  orthodoxy  of  the  existing  generation  is 
but  the  heresy  of  that  which  is  past  —  most  of  the  ideas 
now  held  by  themselves,  and  regarded  as  undeniably  true, 
having  been,  and  that  but  recently,  treated  as  most 
absurd. f  The  disciples  of  Ptolemy  —  seeing  the  sun 
revolve  around  the  earth,  and  finding  in  the  Scriptures 
proof  that  such  was  the  fact  —  had  the  strongest  reason 
for  believing  that  the  accuracy  of  his  doctrines  was 
beyond  the  reach  of  question.  Copernicus  was,  there 
fore,  regarded  as  a  heretic,  and  Galileo  was  compelled  to 
recantation ;  and  yet,  it  is  now  the  established  doctrine 
of  the  schools,  that  "the  earth  it  is,  that  moves."  Such 
having  been  the  case  in  the  past,  it  may  be  so  in  the 
present  —  the  economical  doctrines  now  most  generally 
believed,  passing  into  oblivion,  there  to  take  their  places 
by  the  side  of  the  Ptolemaic  system. 

It  has  been  well  said,  by  an  eminent  writer  of  our  time, 
that  "every  one  must  of  course  think  his  own  opinions 

*  That,  in  this  respect,  the  present  is  but  a  repetition  of  the  past,  is 
proved  by  Newton's  declaration,  "that  a  man  must  either  resolve  to  put 
out  nothing  new,  or  to  become  a  slave  to  defend  it." 

f  "  So  strong  has  been  the  belief  that  the  sun  cannot  be  a  habitable 
world,  that  a  scientific  gentleman  was  pronounced  by  his  medical  attendant 
to  be  insane,  because  he  had  sent  a  paper  to  the  Royal  Society,  in  which 
he  maintained  that  the  light  of  the  sun  proceeds  from  a  dense  and  universal 
aurora,  which  may  afford  ample  light  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  surface 
beneath,  and  yet  be  at  such  a  distance  aloft  as  not  to  be  among  them ; 
that  there  may  be  water  and  dry  1-and  there,  hills  and  dales,  rain  and  fair 
weather;  and  that,  as  the  light  and  seasons  must  be  eternal,  the  sun  may 
easily  be  conceived  to  be  by  far  the  most  blissful  habitation  of  the  whole 
system.  In  less  than  ten  years  after  this  apparently  extravagant  notion 
was  considered  a  proof  of  insanity,  it  was  maintained  by  Sir  William 
Herschel  as  a  rational  and  probable  opinion,  which  might  be  deducible 
from  his  own  observations  on  the  structure  of  the  sun."  —  SIR  DAVID 
BREWSTER. 


X  PREFACE. 

right ;  for,  if  he  thought  them  wrong,  they  would  no 
longer  be  his  opinions  :  but"  that  "there  is  a  wide  differ 
ence  between  regarding  ourselves  as  infallible,  and  being 
firmly  convinced  of  the  truth  of  our  creed.  When,"  he 
says,  "a  man  reflects  on  any  particular  doctrine,  he  may 
be  impressed  with  a  thorough  conviction  of  the  improba 
bility,  or  even  impossibility  of  its  being  false;  and  so  he 
may  feel  in  regard  to  all  his  other  opinions,  when  he 
makes  them  objects  of  separate  contemplations.  And 
yet,  when  he  views  them  in  the  aggregate;  when  he  re 
flects  that  not  a  single  being  on  the  earth  holds  collect 
ively  the  same  ;  when  he  looks  at  the  past  history  and 
present  state  of  mankind,  and  observes  the  various  creeds 
of  different  ages  and  nations,  the  peculiar  modes  of  think 
ing  of  sects,  and  bodies,  and  individuals,  the  notions  once 
firmly  held  which  have  been  exploded,  the  prejudices  once 
universally  prevalent  which  have  been  removed,  and  the 
endless  controversies  which  have  distracted  those  who 
have  made  it  the  business  of  their  lives  to  arrive  at  the 
truth ;  and  when  he  further  dwells  on  the  consideration, 
that  many  of  these  his  fellow-creatures  have  had  a  con 
viction  of  the  justness  of  their  respective  sentiments  equal 
to  his  own,  he  cannot  help  the  obvious  inference,  that  in 
his  own  opinions  it  is  next  to  impossible  that  there  is  not 
an  admixture  of  error;  that  there  is  an  infinitely  greater 
probability  of  his  being  wrong  in  some  than  right  in  all." : 
All  that  the  author  of  the  present  work  desires,  is,  that 
his  arguments  may  be  fairly  weighed,  and  that,  to  that 
end,  the  reader  will  "strengthen  himself,  by  something 
of  an  effort  and  a  resolve,  for  the  unprejudiced  admission 
of  any  conclusion  which  shall  appear  to  be  supported  by 
careful  observation  and  logical  argument,  even  should  it 
prove  of  a  nature  adverse  to  notions  he  may  have  pre 
viously  formed  for  himself,  or  taken  up,  without  exami 
nation,  on  the  credit  of  others.  Such  an  effort  is,  in 

*  Essay  on  the  Publication  of  Opinions,  Section  V. 


PREFACE.  XI 

fact,"  says  Sir  John  Herschel.  "  a  commencement  of  that 
intellectual  discipline  which  forms  one  of  the  most  im 
portant  ends  of  all  science.  It  is  the  first  movement  of 
approach  towards  that  state  of  mental  purity  which  alone 
can  fit  us  for  a  full  and  steady  perception  of  moral  beauty 
as  well  as  physical  adaptation.  It  is  the  '  euphrasy  and 
rue'  with  which  we  must  ( purge  our  sight,'  before  we 
can  receive  and  contemplate  as  they  are  the  lineaments 
of  truth  and  nature."* 

In  the  attempt  here  made,  to  demonstrate  the  univer 
sality  of  natural  laws,  the  author  has  profited  much  ot 
suggestions  by  two  of  his  friends — the  one  above  referred 
to,  and  Dr.  Wm.  Elder,  of  this  city ;  and  to  both  of  them, 
he  now  desires  to  return  his  thanks. 

PHILADKLPHIA,  February  10th,  1858. 

*  Treatise  of  Astronomy,  p.  1. 


CONTENTS 


YOL.  I. 


CHAPTER    I. 

OF    SCIENCE    AND   ITS   METHODS. 

PAG  8 

#  1.  Positive  Knowledge  of  Natural  Phenomena  derived  from  direct  obser 
vation.  The  earliest  abstract  conceptions  of  Nature's  Laws,  only  the  Ex 
pectations  of  Experience.  Logic  and  Mathematics  only  instruments  Tor 
facilitating  the  acquisition  of  science,  and  not  themselves  sciences 9 

£  2.  The  Sciences  developed,  from  the  Abstract  towards  the  Concrete  ;  from 
Masses  to  Atoms ;  from  the  Complex  to  the  Simple.  Particular  truths  go 
with  their  subjects  throughout  the  universe  —  nature's  laws  being  identical 
everywhere,  and  in  all  applications 12 

$  3.  Bacon's  Distributions  and  Partitions  of  Knowledge.  Roots  and 
branches  of  the  tree  of  knowledge 21 

g  4.  The  infancy  of  the  sciences  merely  theoretical :  as  they  mature  into 
positive  knowledge,  .Laws  take  the  place  of  Hypotheses.  Mathematics  in- 
strumentally  regulate  their  development  —  the  Distant  being  studied  by 
aid  of  the  Near,  and  the  Past  and  Future  by  the  Present.  Method  of  dis 
covery  the  same  in  all  departments  of  knowledge.  Comte,  denying  this, 
finds  no  philosophy  in  history,  and  no  science  of  society 23 

$  5.  The  British  school  of  Economists  recognizes,  not  the  real  man  of  so 
ciety,  but  the  artificial  man  of  their  own  system.  Their  Theory,  occupied 
with  the  lowest  instincts  of  humanity,  treats  its  noblest  interests  as  mere 
interpolations  in  their  System 28 

$  6.  All  Sciences,  and  all  their  Methods,  embraced  in  Sociology.  Analysis 
leads  to  Synthesis.  Science  one  and  indivisible.  The  Economical  rela 
tions  of  men  require  mathematical  formulae  to  render  jthem  into  systematic 
truths.  The  Laws  of  society  not  settled.  Terms  of  the  theorists  undefined 
and  equivocal 777 31 

§  7.  Social  science,  the  continent  and  concrete  of  all  others,  waits  upon 
their  development  for  its  own.  Its  impediments.  The  Metaphysical,  must 
be  replaced  by  the  Methodic,  study  of  man.  Physical  and  social  laws 
indivisible  in  the  study  of  society  —  all  the  phenomena  of  this  one  sub 
ject  constituting  but  a  single  science 37 


XIV  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER     II. 

OF    MAN  —  THE    SUBJECT    OF    SOCIAL    SCIENCE. 

g  1.  Association  essential  to  the  existence  of  man.  As  the  Planets  gravi 
tate  to  each  other,  Man  tends  towards  his  fellow-man.  Local  centres 
balance  and  distribute  the  masses  in  order  and  harmony.  Centralization 
and  decentralization  analogous,  and  alike  necessary,  among  planets  and 
societies.  Illustrative  history  of  the  nations.  Freedom  of  association 
maintained  by  the  balancing  attractions.  The  welfare  of  the  individual, 
and  of  the  aggregate,  dependent  upon  their  freedom 41 

§  2.  Individuality  of  man  proportioned  to  the  diversity  of  his  endowments 
and  activities.  Free  association  developes  individuality.  Variety  in  unity, 
and  peace  in  diversity.  The  balance  of  worlds,  and  of  societies,  maintained 
by  counter-balance 52 

g  3.  Responsibility  of  man  measured  by  his  individuality.  Historic  illustra- 
trations.  Association,  individuality,  and  responsibility,  grow  and  decline 
together 57 

§  4.  Man  a  being  of  growth  and  progress.  Progress  is  motion  requiring 
attraction,  depending  upon  reciprocal  action,  and  implying  individuality 
and  association.  —  Progress  is  in  the  ratio  of  these  conditions 60 

$  5.  The  laws  of  being  the  same  in  matter,  man,  and  communities.  In  the 
solar  world,  attraction  and  motion  in  the  ratio  of  the  mass  and  the  prox 
imity  ;  in  the  social  world,  association,  individuality,  responsibility,  deve 
lopment,  and  progress,  directly  proportionate  to  each  other.  Definition  of 
social  science...  .  62 


CHAPTER    III. 

OP    INCREASE    IN    THE    NUMBERS    OP   MANKIND. 

1.  Quantity  of  matter  not  susceptible  of  increase.     Susceptible  of  being 
changed  in  place  and  in  form.     Constantly  taking  new  and  higher  forms — 
passing  from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic,  and  ending  in  man.      Man's 
power  limited  to  the  direction  of  the  natural  forces.     Law  of  endless  cir 
culation 64 

2.  Preparation  of  the  earth  for  the  reception  of  man 71 

3.  Man,  in  common  with  other  animals,  a  consumer  of  food.     His  mission, 
on  this  earth,  so  to  direct  the  natural  forces,  as  to  cause  the  soil  to  yield 
larger  supplies  of  the  commodities  required  for  his  use.     Conditions  upon 
which,  alone,  those  supplies  can  be  augmented.     Can  be  complied  with 
in  those  countries,  only,  in  which  employments  are  diversified,  individu 
ality  is  developed,  and  the  power  of  association  is  increased ; 79 

4.  Law  of  the  relative  increase  in  the  numbers  of  Mankind,  and  in  the 
supply  of  food 88 

5.  Malthusian  law  of  population.     Teaches,   that  while  the  tendency  of 
matter  to  assume  the  lowest  forms,  augments  in  an  arithmetical  ratio  only, 
when  it  seeks  to  attain  the  highest  form,  that  tendency  is  found  existing  in 

a  geometrical  one .* 91 


CONTENTS.  XV 

CHAPTER    I V. 

^ 

OF    THE    OCCUPATION    OF    THE    EAUTH. 

1.  Limited  power  of  man,  in  the  hunter  and  the  shepherd  state.     Move 
ments  of  the  isolated  settler.      Commences  always  with  the  poorer  soils. 
With  increase  of  numbers,  he  acquires  increase  of  force,  and  is  enabled 
to  command  the  services  of  the  richer  soils  —  thence  obtaining  larger  sup 
plies  of  food.      Gradual  passage  from  being  the  slave  of  nature,  towards 
becoming  nature's  master 94 

2.  Mr.  Ricardo's  theory.     Absence  of  the  simplicity  which  always  cha 
racterizes  the  laws  of  nature.     Based  upon  the  assumption  of  a  fact  that 
never  has  existed.     The  law,  as  proved  by  observation,  directly  the  reverse 

of  the  theory  by  him  .propounded 104 

3.  Course  of  settlement  in  the  United  States 108 

4.  Course  of  settlement  in  Mexico,  the  West  Indies,  and  South  America...  118 

5.  Course  of  settlement  in  Great  Britain  122 

6.  Course  of  settlement  in  France,  Belgium,  and  Holland 126 

7.  Course  of  settlement  in  the  Scandinavian  Peninsula,  Russia,  Germany, 
Italy,  the  islands  of  the  Mediterranean,  Greece,  and  Egypt 129 

8.  Course  of  settlement  in  India.     Mr.  Ricardo's  theory  that  of  depopu 
lation  and  growing  weakness;  whereas,  the  law  is  that  of  growing  asso 
ciation,  and  augmenting  power 133 

CHAPTER    V." 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT    CONTINUED. 

1.  Decrease  of  numbers  compels  the  abandonment  of  the  richer  soils,  and 
drives  man  back  to  the  poorer  ones.     Causes  of  the  decline  of  population. 
The  supply  of  food  diminishes  in  a  ratio  greater  than  that  of  man 139 

2.  Real  facts  directly  the  reverse  of  those  supposed  by  Mr.  Ricardo.     Pro 
gress  of  depopulation  in  Asia,  Africa,  and  various  parts  of  Europe 142 

3.  Exhaustion  of  the  soil,  and  progress  of   depopulation  in   the  United 
States.     With   every  step  in  that  direction,  man  loses  value,  and  nature 
acquires  power  at  his  expense 144 


CHAPTER    VI. 

OF   VALUE. 

1.  Origin  of  the  idea  of  Value.     Measure  of  value.     Limited  by  the  cost 

of  reproduction  147 

2.  Idea  of  comparison  inseparably  connected  with  that  of  value.     Com 
modities  and  things  decline  in  value,  as  the  power  of  association  and  com 
bination  becomes  more  and  more  complete 151 

3.  Man  grows  in  value,  as  that  of  commodities  declines 156 

4.  Diminution  in  the  proportions  charged  for  the  use  of  commodities  and 
things,  a  necessary  consequence  of  diminution  in  the  cost  of  reproduction. 
Definition  of  value 157 

5.  What  are  the  things  to  which  we  attach  the  idea  of  value?     Why  are 
they  valued?     How  much  is  their  value? 158 


XVI  CONTENTS. 

$  6.  Inconsistencies  of  Adam  Smith  and  other  economists,  in  reference  to 
the  cause  of  value.  One  only  cause  for  the  value  of  land,  and  of  all  its 
parts  and  products.  Phenomena  in  relation  to  value  in  land,  exhibited  in 

Great  Britain,  the  United  States,  and  other  countries 161 

-_$  7.     Law  of  distribution.     Its  universal  application 169 

\    $  8.     All  values  merely  the  measure  of  the  resistance  offered  by  nature,  to  the 

<^_    possession  of  the  things  desired 172 

§  9.  All  matter  susceptible  of  being  rendered  useful  to  man.  That  it  may 
become  so,  he  must  have  power  for  its  direction.  Utility  the  measure  of 
the  power  of  man  over  nature.  Value,  that  of  nature's  power  over  man...  176 


f 


CHAPTER    VII 

OF    WEALTH. 

1.  In  what  does  wealth  consist  ?  Commodities,  or  things,  not  wealth  to 
those  who  have  not  the  knowledge  how  to  use  them.  First  steps  towards 
the  acquisition  of  wealth  always  the  most  costly  and  the  least  productive. 
Definition  of  wealth 181 

$  2.  Combination  of  action  essential  to  the  growth  of  wealth.  The  less  the 
machinery  of  exchange  required,  the  greater  the  power  of  accumulation. 
Wealth  grows  with  the  decline  in  the  value  of  commodities,  or  things, 
required  for  man's  uses  and  purposes 186 

§  3.  Of  positive  and  relative  wealth.  Man's  progress  in  the  ratio  of  the 
decline  in  the  value  of  commodities,  and  the  growth  in  his  own 191 

g  4.  Material  character  of  the  modern  political  economy.  Holds  that  no 
values  are  to  be  regarded  as  wealth,  but  those  which  take  a  material 
form.  All  employments  regarded  as  unproductive,  that  do  not  result  in 
the  production  of  commodities,  or  things 192 

g  5.  Definition  of  wealth  now  given,  in  full  accordance  with  its  general  sig 
nification  of  happiness,  prosperity,  and  power.  Grows  with  the  growth  of 
the  power  of  man  to  associate  with  his  fellow-man 194 


CHAPTER    VI I  T. 

OP   THE    FORMATION    OF    SOCIETY. 

1.  In  what  society  consists.     The  words  society  and  commerce  but  dif 
ferent  modes  of  expressing  the  same  idea.     That  there  may  be  commerce, 
there  must  be    differences.      Combinations  in    society  subject  to  the  law 

of  definite  proportions 198 

2.  Every  act  of  association  an  act  of  motion.    Laws  of  motion  those  which 
govern  the  societary  movement.     All  progress  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the 
substitution  of  continued  for  intermitted  motion.      No  continuity  of  mo 
tion,  and  no  power  where  there  exist  no  differences.     The  more  numerous 
the  latter,  the  more  rapid  is  the  societary  movement,  and  the  greater  the 
tendency  towards  acceleration.     The  more  rapid  the  motion,  the  greater  is 
the  tendency  to  diminution  in  the  value  of  commodities,  and  increase  in 
that  of  man  200 

3.  Causes  of  disturbance,  tending  to  the  arrest  of  the  societary  motion. 
In  the  hunter  state,  brute  force  constitutes  man's  only  wealth.     Trade 
commences  with  the  traffic  in  bones,  muscles,  and  blood — the  trade  in  man.  205 


I 


CONTENTS.  XVU 

4.  Trade  and  commerce  usually  regarded  as  convertible  terms,  yet  wholly 
different  —  the  latter  being  the  object  sought  to  be  accomplished,  and  the 
former  only  the  instrument  used  for  its  accomplishment.     Necessity  for 
employing  the  trader  and  transporter,  an  obstacle  standing  in  the  way  of 
commerce.     Commerce  grows  with  the  decline  in  the  power  of  the  trader. 
Trade  tends  towards  centralization,  and  towards  disturbance  of  the  public 
peace.     War  and  trade  regard  man  as  the  instrument  to  be  used;  where 
as,  commerce  regards  trade  as  the  instrument  to  be  used  by  man 210 

5.  Development  of  the  pursuits  of  man  the  same  as  that  of  science  —  the 
passage  being  from  the  abstract  to  the  more  concrete.     War  and  trade  the 
most  abstract,  and  therefore  first  developed.     Soldiers  and  traders  always 

in  alliance  with  each  other 215 

6.  Labors  required  for  effecting  changes  of  place,  next  in  the  order  of 
development.      Diminish  in  their  proportions,  as  population  and  wealth 
increase 218 

7.  Labors  required  for  effecting  mechanical  and  chemical  changes  of  form. 
Require   a  higher  degree    of   knowledge.      With    that  knowledge    conies 
wealth 219 

8.  Vital  changes  in  the  forms  of  matter.     Agriculture  the  great  pursuit  of 
man.      Requires  a  large  amount  of  knowledge,  and  therefore  late  in  its 
development 220 

9.  Commerce  last  in  the  order.     Grows  with  the  growth  of  the  power  of 
association 222 

10.  The  more  natural  the   form  of  society,  the  greater  its  tendency  to 
durability.     The  more  perfect  the  poaver  of   association,  the  more  does 
society  tend  to  take  a  natural  form.     The  more  numerous  the  differences, 
the  greater  the  power  of  association 223 

11.  Natural  history  of  commerce.      Subjects,  order,  succession,  and  co 
ordination  of.  the  classes  of  producers,  transporters,  and  consumers   of 
industrial  products,  classified  and  illustrated.      The  analogies  of  natural 
law  universal 224 

12.  Erroneous  idea  that  societies  tend,  naturally,  to  pass  through  various 
forms,  ending  always  in  death.     No  reason  why  any  society  should  fail  to 
become  more  prosperous  from  age  to  age 236 

13.  Theory  of  Mr.  Ricardo  leads  to  results  directly  the  reverse  of  this  — 
proving  that  man  must  become  more  and  more  the  slave  of  nature,  and  of 

his  fellow -men.     Unchristian  character  of  the  modern  political  economy...  231 


CHAPTER    IX. 

OF   APPROPRIATION. 

1.  War  and  trade  the  characteristics  of  the  early  periods  of  society.     Ne 
cessity  for  the  services  of  the  warrior  and  the  trader,  diminishes  with  the 
growth  of  wealth  and  population.    Progress  of  communities  towards  wealth 
and  power,  in  the  direct  ratio  of  their  ability  to  dispense  with  both 234 

2.  Close  connection  between  war  and  trade  visible  in  every  page  of  history. 
Their  tendency  towards  centralization.     Their  power  diminishes  with  the 
growth  of  commerce 236 

3.  Social  phenomena  exhibited  in  the  history  of  Attica 240 

4.  Social  phenomena  exhibited  in  the  history  of  Sparta 245 

5.  Social  phenomena  exhibited  in  the  history  of  Carthage 246 

VOL.  I.— 2 


XV111  CONTENTS. 

£  G.     Social  phenomena  exhibited  in  the  history  of  Rome 246 

#  7.  Social  phenomena  exhibited  in  the  history  of  Venice,  Pisa,  and  Genoa  248 
$  8.     Social  phenomena  exhibited  in  the  history  of  Holland  249 

#  9.     Social  phenomena  exhibited  in  the  history  of  Portugal 249 

$  10.     Social  phenomena  exhibited  in  the  history  of  Spain 250 

$  11.     Social  phenomena  exhibited  in  the  history  of  France 252 

g  12.  Social  phenomena  exhibited  in  the  history  of  England  and  the  United 

States 257 

$  13.  The  richer  soils  abandoned  in  all  the  countries  in  which  war,  or  trade, 
obtains  the  mastery  over  commerce.  Individual  splendor  grows  in  the 
ratio  of  the  growing  weakness  of  the  community.  The  less  the  proportion 
borne  by  soldiers  and  traders  to  the  mass  of  which  the  society  is  composed, 
the  greater  is  its  tendency  towards  strength  and  durability 257 

g  14.  The  higher  the  organization  of  society,  the  greater  is  its  vigor,  and 
the  better  its  prospect  of  life.  The  more  numerous  the  differences,  the 
higher  is  the  organization,  an-d  the  greater  the  commerce.  Increase  in 
the  proportions  of  soldiers  and  traders  tends  towards  centralization,  and 
moral,  physical,  and  political  death  259 

$  15.  Modern  political  economists  teach  the  reverse  of  this.  Errors 
resulting  from  using  the  same  words,  to  express  ideas  that  are  wholly 
different ..  260 


CHAPTER    X. 

OF    CHANGES    OF    MATTER   IN    PLACE. 

$  1.  Difficulty,  in  the  early  period  of  society,  of  effecting  changes  in  the 
place  of  matter.  The  necessity  for  so  doing,  the  chief  obstacle  to  com 
merce.  Diminishes  with  the  growth  of  population  and  of  wealth 263 

§  2.  Decline  in  the  proportion  of  the  society  required  for  effecting  changes 
of  place.  Accompanied  by  rapid  growth  of  commerce,  and  corresponding 
growth  of  power  to  obtain  better  means  of  transportation 264 

\  3.  The  more  perfect  the  commerce  among  men,  the  greater  is  the  tendency 
towards  the  removal  of  the  remaining  obstacles  to  association.  Man's  pro 
gress,  in  whatsoever  direction,  one  of  constant  acceleration 267 

$  4.  The  first  and  heaviest  tax  to  be  paid  by  land  and  labor  is  that  of  trans 
portation.  The  farmer,  near  to  market,  always  making  a  machine,  whereas, 
the  one  distant  therefrom  is  always  destroying  one 271 

$  5.  Manure  the  commodity  most  needed  by  man,  and  the  one  that  least 
bears  transportation 273 

$  6.  The  less  the  quantity  of  labor  given  to  effecting  changes  of  place,  the 
greater  is  that  which  may  be  given  to  production.  Power  to  maintain 
commerce  grows  with  this  change  of  proportions.  The  trader  desires  to 
perpetuate  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place 279 

g  7.  Freedom  grows  with  the  growth  of  the  power  of  association.  The  ob 
stacle  to  association  being  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place,  man 
becomes  more  free,  as  that  necessity  tends  to  disappear 283 


CONTENTS.  xix 

CHAPTER    XI. 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT    CONTINUED. 

g  1.  Colonial  policy  of  Greece,  Spain,  and  France.  That  of  Britain  the  first 
in  which  we  meet  with  prohibition  of  association  among  the  colonists. 
Object  of  the  prohibition,  that  of  producing  a  necessity  for  effecting  changes 
in  the  place  of  matter.  The  policy  barbaric  in  its  tendencies,  and  hence  it 

is,  that  it  has  given  rise  to  the  theory  of  over-population 285 

g  2.     British  policy  looks  to  the  dispersion  of  man,  and  to  increase  in  the 

proportion  of  society  engaged  in  trade  and  transportation 289 

g  3.     Views  of  Adam  Smith  in  regard  to  the  advantages  of  commerce  291 

g  4.     British  colonial  system,  as  exhibited  in  the  West  India  Islands 295 

g  5.  Theory  of  over-population  an  effort  to  account  for  facts  artificially  pro 
duced,  by  aid  of  supposed  natural  laws 305 

CHAPTER    XII. 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT    CONTINUED. 

g  1.  Phenomena  of  society,  as  presented  in  the  history  of  Portugal 308 

g  2.  Phenomena  of  society,  as  presented  in  the  history  of  the  Turkish  Empire  311 

g  3.  Phenomena  of  society,  as  presented  in  the  history  of  Ireland 320 

g  4.  Real  cause  of  the  decay  of  Ireland 333 

CHAPTER    XIII. 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT    CONTINUED. 

g  1.     Local  action,  and  local  combination,  conspicuous  throughout  the  history 

of  Hindoostan.     Their  disappearance  under  the  British  rule 338 

g  2.     Indian  commerce  everywhere  sacrificed,  for  the  promotion  of  trade 343 

g  3.     Annihilation  of  Indian  manufactures.     Its  ruinous  effects 345 

g  4.     Growing  necessity  for  transportation,  and  consequent  waste  of  labor, 

throughout  India 351 

g  5.     Waste  of  capital,  and  destruction  of  the  power  of  accumulation 353 

g  6.     Diminution  in  the  security  of  person  and  property,  correspondent  with 

the  extension  of  British  rule,  and  with  the  growing  centralization 355 

g  7.     Trivial  value  of  private  rights  in  the  land  of  India 358 

g  8.  India  a  paying  country,  under  its  native  princes.  Its  steady  deterio 
ration,  under  the  system  which  looks  to  increasing  the  necessity  for  the 

trader  and  transporter's  services 359 

g  9.     Causes  of  the  decline  of  India 362 

CHAPTER    XIV. 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT    CONTINUED. 

§  1.  Review  of  the  phenomena  observed  in  the  four  great  communities, 
above  referred  to.  Differing  in  all  other  respects,  they  are  alike  in  the  fact, 
that  they  have  been  deprived  of  all  power  to  diversify  their  employments, 
and  have  thus  been  forced  to  increase  their  dependence  on  the  transporter 
and  the  trader 365 


XX  CONTENTS. 

#  2.  Destructive  effects  of  a  growing  necessity  for  the  services  of  the  trader.  367 
$  3.  British  policy  looks  solely  to  the  increase  of  trade.  An  enlightened 

selfishness  would  seek  the  promotion  of  commerce 371 

$  4.  Constant  waste  of  capital  in  all  the  countries  subject  to  the  British 

system 374 

$  5.  Enormous  friction,  and  consequent  waste  of  power,  produced  by  the 

growing  necessity  for  ships 376 

?  6.  Origin  of  the  idea  of  over-population 379 

CHAPTER    XV. 

OF    MECHANICAL    AND    CHEMICAL    CHANGES    IN    THE    FORMS    OF    MATTER. 

2  1.  For  effecting  changes  in  the  forms  of  matter,  a  knowledge  of  the  pro 
perties  of  matter  is  required.  The  work  of  conversion  more  concrete  and 
special  than  that  of  transportation ,•  and,  therefore,  later  in  its  develop 
ment.  Its  tendency  to  increase  the  utility  of  matter,  and  to  diminish  the 
value  of  commodities  required  for  man's  use 381 

$  2.  Instruments  required  for  obtaining  power  to  command  the  services  of 
the  natural  forces.  That  power  constitutes  wealth.  First  steps,  in  this 
direction,  the  most  difficult,  and  the  least  productive 3S3 

$  3.  Conversion  diminishes  the  labor  required  for  transportation,  while 
increasing  that  which  may  be  given  to  production.  Consequent  change 
in  the  proportions  of  the  several  classes  into  which  society  is  divided 384 

$  4.     Economy  of  human  effort  resulting  from  increased  facility  of  conversion  385 

$  5.  Waste  of  labor  where  the  place  of  conversion  is  distant  from  that  of 
production.  The  tendency  towards  development  of  the  treasures  of  the 
earth,  is  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  proximity  of  the  consumer  to  the  pro 
ducer  387 

$  6.  Societary  motion  tends  to  increase  in  a  geometrical  ratio,  when  per 
mitted  to  proceed  onward  and  undisturbed.  Frequently,  however,  arrested. 

'  Causes  of  disturbance.  Efforts  to  obtain  a  monopoly  of  the  control  of  the 
natural  forces  required  in  the  work  of  conversion 389 

$  7.  Selfishness,  among  communities  as  among  individuals,  generally  de 
feats  itself.  Better  for  man,  that  the  natural  forces  had  no  existence,  than 
that  their  services  should  be  monopolized 391 

CHAPTER    XVI. 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT    CONTINUED. 

g  1.  Rude  character  of  English  commerce  at  the  opening  of  the  fourteenth 
century.  Phenomena  then  presented,  precisely  similar  to  those  exhibited 
in  the  agricultural  communities  of  the  present  day  39J 

$  2.     Change  of  policy  under  Edward  III.,  and  its  effects 39(1 

$  3.  The  condition  of  England,  and  the  needs  of  its  people,  in  the  time  of 
Charles  II.,  as  exhibited  by  Andrew  Yarranton 398 

$  4.  Effects  of  dependence  upon  the  distant  market,  as  shown  in  England, 
in  the  early  portion  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Changes  in  the  condition  of 
the  people,  consequent  upon  diminution  of  that  dependence 404 

/}  5.  Monopolistic  character  of  the  British  system.  Nothing  comparable 
*vith  it,  in  its  power  for  evil,  ever  before  devised 40" 


CONTENTS.  XXI 

6.  Power  for  evil,  when  wrongly  directed,  exists,  everywhere,  in  the  ratio 

of  that  for  good,  when  guided  in  the  right  direction 409 

7.  British  system  looks  to  diminishing  the  tax  of  transportation  for  the 
British  people,  but  increasing  it  for  the  other  nations  of  the  world 410 

8.  Enormous  power  acquired  by  it,  for  the  taxation  of  other  communities.  412 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT    CONTINUED. 

$  1.  Errors  of  the  British  system  obvious  to  Adam  Smith.  His  caution  to 
his  countrymen,  in  regard  to  the  dangers  necessarily  incident  to  an  exclu 
sive  dependence  upon  trade 414 

$  2.  His  advice  neglected,  and  hence  the  origin  of  the  theory  of  over 
population  416 

$  3.  Growth  of  pauperism,  under  the  British  system,  coincident  with  in 
crease  in  the  power  of  man  to  direct  the  natural  forces 418 

g  4.     Warlike  and  monopolistic  character  of  the  system 410 

$  5.     Equally  injurious  to  the  British  people,  and  to  those  of  other  countries..  421 

g  6.  By  destroying  among  other  people  the  power  to  sell  their  labor,  it  de 
stroys  competition  for  the  purchase  of  British  labor.  Teaching,  that  to  en 
able  capital  to  obtain  a  fair  remuneration,  labor  must  be  kept  down,  it  tends 
to  the  production  of  slavery  everywhere 424 

$  7.  Approximation  in  the  prices  of  raw  materials  and  finished  commodities, 
the  one  essential  characteristic  of  civilization.  British  system  looks  to  the 
prevention  of  that  approximation.  Its  tendency  towards  reduction  of  other 
communities  to  a  state  of  barbarism 427 

g  9.  Its  effects,  as  exhibited  in  the  prices  of  raw  materials  and  finished  pro 
ducts,  in  the  British  market  430 

$  9.  Tends  to  increase  the  proportions  of  the  various  societies  engaged  in 
trade  and  transportation.  That  increase  an  evidence  of  declining  civiliza 
tion ,..  433 


CHAPT  ER    XVIII. 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT   CONTINUED. 

g  1.  Stoppage  of  the  circulation  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  predomi 
nance  of  the  British  system.  Inconsistencies  of  British  teachers  of  social 

science 435 

$  2.     Decline  of  English  commerce,  consequent  upon  increase  in  the  power  of 

trade.     Condition  of  the  agricultural  laborer 441 

%  3.     Growth  of  trading  centralization  exhibited  throughout  England 444 

$  4.  Increase  in  the  proportions  of  the  product  of  labor  absorbed  by  the  tra 
ders  and  transporters.  Gulf  dividing  the  higher  and  lower  classes  a  con 
stantly  widening  one 445 

$  5.     Brutalizing  tendency  of  the  system 447 

$  6.     Centralization  and  demoralization  always  going  together 448 

g  7.  Failure  of  the  Reform  Act  to  realize  the  expectations  of  its  friends.  Why 
it  failed ..  450 


XX11  CONTENTS. 

$  8.  Diminution  in  the  power  of  self-direction,  in  the  people  and  the  com 
munity 451 

£  9.  Every  measure  tending  to  produce  stoppage  of  the  societary  motion 
abroad,  tends  equally  to  cause  stoppage  at  home 455 

$  10.     Constant  companionship  of  war  and  trade 457 


CHAPTER    XIX. 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT    CONTINUED. 

g  1.  Phenomena  attendant  upon  advancing  civilization,  and  growing  bar 
barism  T. 459 

g  2.  In  advancing  countries,  the  tax  of  transportation  diminishes.  In  de 
clining  ones,  it,  as  steadily,  increases 460 

§  3.  Phenomena  of  society,  as  presented  in  the  histories  of  Greece,  Italy, 
Britain,  Turkey,  Portugal,  and  the  British  colonies 461 

g  4.  Necessity  for  careful  study  of  the  system  under  which  originated  the 
theory  of  over-population 463 

§  5.  Laws  of  nature  act  always  in  the  same  direction.  Oscillating  motion 
of  the  theory  of  population,  presented  for  consideration  by  Mr.  Mal- 
thus 465 

g  6.  Inevitable  tendency  of  the  Ricurdo-Malthusian  doctrine,  that  of  making 
slavery  the  ultimate  condition  of  the  laborer 466 

g  7.  The  system  of  the  British  school  a  retrograde  one.  Had  its  origin  in  a 
retrograde  policy 467 

\  8.     Differences  between  Adam  Smith  and  the  modern  British  economists...  470 

§  9.  Law  of  definite  proportions,  as  exhibited  in  the  gradual  changes  of  the 
societary  distribution 472 


PRINCIPLES  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE. 


CHAPTER    I. 

OF   SCIENCE   AND   ITS   METHODS. 

§  1.  THE  first  man,  when  he  had  day  after  day,  even  for  a  single 
week,  witnessed  the  rising  and  setting  of  the  sun,  and  had  seen 
that  the  former  had  invariably  been  accompanied  by  the  presence 
of  light,  while  the  latter  had  as  invariably  been  followed  by  its 
absence,  had  acquired  the  first  rude  elements  of  positive  knowledge, 
or  science.  The  cause — the  sun's  rising — being  given,  it  would 
have  been  beyond  his  power  to  conceive  that  the  effect  should  not 
follow.  With  further  observation  he  learned  to  remark  that  at 
certain  seasons  of  the  year  the  luminary  appeared  to  traverse  par 
ticular  portions  of  the  heavens,  and  that  then  it  was  always 
warm,  and  the  trees  put  forth  leaves  to  be  followed  by  fruit ; 
whereas,  at  others,  it  appeared  to  occupy  other  portions  of  the 
heavens,  and  then  the  fruit  disappeared  and  the  leaves  fell,  as  a 
prelude  to  the  winter's  cold.  Here  was  a  further  addition  to  his, 
stock  of  knowledge,  and,  with  it  came  foresight,  and  a  feeling  of 
the  necessity  for  action.  If  he  would  live  during  the  season  of 
cold,  he  could  do  so  only  by  preparing  for  it  during  the  season  of 
heat,  a  principle  as  thoroughly  understood  by  the  wandering  Esqui 
maux  of  the  shores  of  the  Arctic  Ocean,  as  by  the  most  enlightened 
and  eminent  philosopher  of  Europe  or  America. 

Earliest  among  the  ideas  of  such  a  man  would  be  those  of  space, 
quantity,  and  form.  The  sun  was  obviously  very  remote,  while  of 
the  trees  some  were  distant  and  others  were  close  at  hand.  The 
moon  was  single,  while  the  stars  were  countless.  The  tree  was 
tall,  while  the  shrub  was  short.  The  hills  were  high,  and  tending 
towards  a  point,  while  the  plains  were  low  and  flat.  We  have. 
2 


10  CHAPTER  I.   §  1. 

here  the  most  abstract,  simple,  and  obvious  of  all  conceptions. 
The  idea  of  space  is  the  same,  whether  we  regard  the  distance 
between  the  sun  and  the  stars  by  which  he  is  surrounded,  or  that 
between  the  mountains  and  ourselves.  So,  too,  with  number  and 
form,  which  apply  as  readily  to  the  sands  of  the  sea-shore  as  to 
the  gigantic  trees  of  the  forest,  or  to  the  various  bodies  seen  to  be 
moving  through  the  heavens. 

Next  in  order  would  come  the  desire,  or  the  necessity,  for  com 
paring  distances,  numbers,  and  magnitudes,  and  the  means  for  this 
would  be  at  hand  in  machinery  supplied  by  nature,  and  always  at 
his  command.  His  finger,  or  his  arm,  would  supply  a  measure  of 
magnitudes,  while  his  pace  would  do  the  same  by  distance,  and  the 
standard  with  which  he  would  compare  the  weights  would  be  found 
in  some  one  among  the  most  ordinary  commodities  by  which  he 
was  surrounded.  In  numerous  cases,  however,  distances,  veloci 
ties,  or  dimensions,  are  found  to  be  beyond  the  reach  of  direct 
measurement,  and  thus  is  produced  a  necessity  for  devising  means 
of  comparing  distant  and  unknown  quantities  with  those  that  being 
near  can  be  ascertained,  and  hence  arises  mathematics,  or  The 
Science — so  denominated  by  the  Greeks,  because  to  its  help  was 
due  nearly  all  the  positive  knowledge  of  which  they  were  pos 
sessed. 

The  multiplication  table  enables  the  ploughman  to  determine  the 
number  of  days  contained  in  a  given  number  of  weeks,  and  the 
merchant  to  calculate  the  number  of  pounds  contained  in  his  cargo 
of  cotton.  By  help  of  his  rule,  the  carpenter  determines  the  dis 
tance  between  the  two  ends  of  the  plank  on  which  he  works.  The 
sounding-line  enables  the  sailor  to  ascertain  the  depth  of  water 
around  his  ship,  and  by  help  of  the  barometer  the  traveller  deter 
mines  the  height  of  the  mountain  on  which  he  stands.  All  these 
are  instruments  for  facilitating  the  acquisition  of  knowledge,  and 
such,  too,  are  the  formula?  of  mathematics,  by  help  of  which  the 
philosopher  is  enabled  to  determine  the  magnitude  and  weight  of 
bodies  distant  from  him  millions  of  millions  of  miles,  and  is  thus 
enabled  to  solve  innumerable  questions  of  the  highest  interest  to 
man.  They  are  the  key  to  science,  but  are  not  to  be  confounded 
with  science  itself,  although  often  included  in  the  list  of  sciences,  , 
and  even  so  recently  as  in  M.  Comte's  well-known  work.  That 
such  should  ever  have  been  the  case  has  been  due  to  the  fact  that 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  11 

so  much  of  what  is  really  physics  is  discussed  under  the  head  of 
mathematics ;  as  is  the  case  with  the  great  laws  for  whose  discovery 
we  are  indebted  to  Kepler,  Galileo,  and  Newton.  That  a  body 
impelled  by  a  single  force  will  move  in  a  right  line  and  with  a 
velocity  that  is  invariable,  and  that  action  and  reaction  are  equal 
and  opposite,  are  facts,  at  the  knowledge  of  which  we  have 
arrived  in  consequence  of  pursuing  a  certain  mode  of  investigation ; 
but  when  obtained,  they  are  purely  physical  facts,  obtained  by 
help  of  the  instrument  to  which  we  apply  the  term  mathematics — 
and  which  is,  to  use  the  words  of  M.  Comte,  simply  "an  immense 
extension  of  natural  logic  to  a  certain  order  of  deductions."* 

Logic  is  itself,  however,  but  another  of  the  instruments  devised 
by  man  for  enabling  him  to  obtain  a  knowledge  of  nature's  laws. 
To  his  eyes  the  earth  appears  to  be  a  plane,  and  yet  he  sees  the 
sun  rising  daily  in  the  east  and  setting  as  regularly  in  the  west,  from 
which  he  might  infer  that  it  would  always  continue  so  to  do — but  of 
this  he  can  feel  no  certainty  until  he  has  satisfied  himself  why  it  is 
that  it  does  so.  At  one  time,  he  sees  the  sun  to  be  eclipsed,  while 
at  another,  the  moon  ceases  to  give  light,  and  he  desires  to  know 
why  such  things  are — what  is  the  law  governing  the  movements  of 
those  bodies  ;  having  obtained  which  he  is  enabled  to  predict  when 
they  will  again  cease  to  give  light,  and  to  determine  when  they 
must  have  done  so  in  times  that  are  past.  At  one  moment  ice 
or  salt  melts;  at  another  gas  explodes;  and  at  a  third,  walls  are 
shattered  and  cities  are  hurled  to  the  ground;  and  he  seeks  to  know 
why  these  things  are — what  is  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  ? 
In  the  effort  to  obtain  answers  to  all  these  questions,  he  observes 
and  records  facts,  and  these  he  arranges  with  a  view  to  deduce 
from  them  the  laws  by  virtue  of  which  they  occur — and  he  invents 
barometers,  thermometers,  and  other  instruments  to  aid  him  in  his 
observation — but  the  ultimate  object  of  all  is  that  of  obtaining  an 
answer  to  the  questions :  Why  are  all  these  things  ?  Why  is  it 
that  dew  falls  on  one  day  and  not  on  another  ?  Why  is  it  that 
corn  grows  abundantly  in  this  field  and  fails  altogether  in  that 
one  ?  Why  is  it  that  coal  burns  and  granite  will  not  ?  What,  in 
a  word,  are  the  laws  instituted  by  the  Creator  for  the  government 
of  matter  ?  The  answers  to  these  questions  constitute  science — 

*  Positive  Philosophy,  Martineau's  Translation,  Vol.  i.  33. 


12  CHAPTER  I.  §  2. 

and  mathematics,  logic,  and  all  other  of  the  machinery  in  use  are 
but  instruments  used  by  him  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  them. 

In  discussing  the  subject  of  rational  mechanics,  under  the  head 
of  mathematics,  M.  Conite  informs  his  readers  that  we  here  "  en 
counter  a  perpetual  confusion  between  the  abstract  and  the  con 
crete  points  of  view  ;  between  the  logical  and  the  physical ; 
between  the  artificial  conceptions  necessary  to  help  as  to  general 
laws  of  equilibrium  and  motion,  and  the  natural  facts  furnished  by 
observation,  which  must  form  the  basis  of  the  science."*  This, 
however,  is  only  saying  that  as  "  the  natural  facts,"  furnished  by 
observation,  increase  in  number,  there  arises  a  necessity  for  en 
deavoring  to  perfect  the  machinery  by  the  help  of  which  they  are  to 
be  studied,  and  that  this  is  the  case  in  the  instance  referred  to  by 
M.  Comte,  is  shown  in  his  admission  that  the  science  of  which  he 
treats  is  "  founded  on  some  general  facts,  furnished  by  observa 
tion,  of  which  we  can  give  no  explanation  whatever,  "f  As  we  pass 
from  gate  to  gate  of  science,  we  pass  from  simple  to  compound 
locks,  requiring  additional  wards  in  the  keys  by  which  they  are  to 
be  opened;  but  the  key  still  remains  a  key,  and  can  never  become  a 
lock,  even  though  the  wards  should  become  fifty-fold  more  nume 
rous  than  those  of  any  yet  constructed  by  Bramah,  Chubb,  or 
Hobbs,  and  might  require  years  of  study  before  its  proper  man 
agement  could  be  acquired.  There  might  then  arise  what  would 
be  called  the  science  of  the  key,  but  it  would  constitute  no  part  of 
true  science.  When  D'Alembert  made,  to  use  the  words  of  Comte, 
"  a  discovery,  by  help  of  which  all  investigation  of  the  motion  of 
any  body  or  system  might  be  converted  at  once  into  a  question  of 
equilibrium,"  he  merely  opened  a  new  ward  in  the  key  by  which 
we  were  to  unlock  the  cabinet  of  nature,  and  thus  enlarge  the 
boundaries  of  that  department  of  knowledge  which  treats  of  the 
properties  of  matter  and  the  laws  by  which  it  is  governed,  and 
known  as  physical  science. 

§  2.  The  abstract  mathematics  necessarily  took  precedence  of 
the  more  concrete  physics,  because  they  were  the  sole  product  of 
logic,  and  dependent  upon  those  first  principles  which  are  in  their 

*  Positive  Philosophy,  Martineau's  Translation,  Vol.  i.  p.  107. 
f  Ibid. 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  13 

elements  so  nearly  intuitive  that  when  the  boy  commences  the 
study  of  geometry,  he  finds  that  he  had  already  acquired  a  know 
ledge  of  much  that  is  now  being  given  to  him  as  science.  Hence, 
too,  it  was  that  moral  science,  poetry,  the  fine  arts,  and  metaphysics 
were  so  far  advanced  in  Greece,  while  mechanical  science  had 
scarcely  an  existence. 

In  default  of  observation,  men  of  speculative  habits  looked 
inwards  to  their  own  minds  and  invented  theories  that  were  given 
to  the  world  as  laws,  but,  as  has  well  been  said:  "  Man  can  invent 
nothing  in  science  or  religion  but  falsehood,  and  all  the  truths  that 
he  discovers  are  but  facts  or  laws  that  have  emanated  from  the 
Creator."  The  men  of  the  Middle  Ages — the  philosophers  of  the 
schools — taught  the  theories  that  had  been  invented  by  thei 
Grecian  predecessors,  and  it  was  left  for  Bacon  to  teach  the  phi- 
losophy  that  leads  to  the  search  for  truth  among  the  facts  of  nature 
and  not  among  the  speculations  of  men.  From  his  day  to  the 
present  there  has  been  a  perpetual  tendency  towards  the  substitu 
tion  of  careful  observation  and  induction  for  the  dreams  of  theo 
rists,  and  as  the  Cartesian  doctrine  of  Yortices  gave  way  to  the 
discovery  of  gravitation,  so  the  imaginary  phlogiston  of  Stahl,  and 
the  Plutonian  and  Neptunian  cosmogonies  have  yielded  to  the  dis 
coveries  of  modern  science.  The  former  was  early  displaced  by 
the  oxygen  of  Lavoisier,  while  the  latter  held  their  ground  until 
disproved  by  the  observations  of  geologists,  whose  branch  of  science 
dates  its  existence  but  little  beyond  the  present  century. 

In  physics,  as  has  everywhere  been  the  case,  the  more  abstract 
and  general  has,  in  its  development,  taken  precedence  of  that 
which  is  concrete  and  special.  Astronomy,  the  science  of  the  laws 
governing  bodies  exterior  to  our  own  planet,  was  studied  at  an 
Cxirly  period,  the  shepherds  of  Chaldea  having  carefully  noted  the 
movements  of  the  celestial  bodies,  and  Babylonians  having  calcu 
lated  eclipses  thousands  of  years  before  the  commencement  of  the 
Christian  era.  From  a  well  of  Syene,  Eratosthenes  obtained  the 
observations  required  for  determining  the  terrestrial  meridian ;  and 
many  centuries  before  Copernicus,  Archimedes  taught  the  double 
motion  of  the  earth  around  its  axis  and  around  the  sun.  The  pre 
cise  length  of  the  solar  year  was  determined  by  Hipparchus,  while 
Mexican  and  Etrurian  observation  led  in  this  respect  so  nearly  to 
the  same  result,  that  the  difference  between  them  was  but  ten 
minutes. 


14  CHAPTER  I.   §  2. 

The  motions  of  the  celestial  bodies  were  thus  early  studied  and 
comprehended,  yet  was  it  left  to  Newton  to  discover  the  reason 
why  the  apple  falls  to  the  earth ;  to  Franklin  to  discover  the 
identity  of  lightning  and  electricity;  to  Cavendish  to  discover  the 
composition  of  the  air  we  breathe  ;  to  Black  to  discover  the 
existence  of  latent  heat ;  and  to  philosophers,  even  of  our  own 
day,  to  discover  the  laws  in  virtue  of  which  we  see  and  hear. 
Laplace's  great  work  of  Celestial  Mechanics,  was  the  product  of 
the  same  period  that  witnessed  the  birth  of  a  new  science,  having 
for  its  object  to  determine  the  composition  of  the  globe  on  which 
we  live  and  move,  and  from  which  we  derive  our  daily  bread.  It 
is  thus,  that  as  we  approach  nearer  to  man,  his  uses  and  purposes, 
we  find  the  greatest  retardation  of  that  positive  knowledge  so  early 
attained  in  reference  to  the  method  to  be  pursued  in  the  effort  for 
its  attainment.  The  study  of  the  history  of  science  leads  inevitably 
to  an  agreement  with  Buffon  in  the  opinion  that,  "however  great 
may  be  our  interest  in  knowing  ourselves,"  we  probably  "  under 
stand  better  all  that  is  not  ourselves"— and  with  Rousseau  in  the 
belief  that  "much  philosophy  is  required  for  observing  the  facts 
that  are  very  near  to  us." 

Passing  from  the  more  abstract  and  general  laws  governing  the 
movements  of  distant  bodies  towards  those  determining  the  com 
position  of  the  matter  by  which  we  are  immediately  surrounded, 
we  find  new  laws,  but  all  subordinate  to,  and  in  harmony  with, 
those  first  obtained.  Chemistry,  following  physics,  which  deals 
with  masses,  deals  with  the  elements  of  which  they  are  composed, 
all  of  which  are,  however,  subject  to  the  same  laws  by  which  the 
masses  themselves  are  governed.  The  atoms  produced  by  the 
analysis  of  Cavendish,  were  as  obedient  to  the  law  of  gravitation 
as  were  the  earth,  the  satellites  of  Jupiter,  and  Jupiter  himself. 
"  The  distinction  between  physics  and  chemistry,"  says  M.  Comte, 
"  is  much  less  easy  to  establish"  than  between  chemistry  and 
astronomy,  and,  as  he  continues,  "it  is  one  more  difficult  to  pro 
nounce  upon  from  day  to  day,  as  new  discoveries  bring  to  light 
closer  relations  between  them."*  That  such  is  the  case,  will 
readily  be  seen  by  the  reader  who  reflects  how  much  of  the  present 
great  development  of  physical  knowledge  has  been  due  to  the  labors 

*  Positive  Philosophy,  Martineau's  Translation,  vol.  i.  p.  216. 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  15 

of  Cavendish,  Priestley,  Black,  Davy,  Lavoisier,  Fourcroy,  Gay- 
Lussac,  and  other  eminent  chemists. 

On  another  occasion,  in  the  course  of  his  admirable  review  of  the 
progress  and  gradual  development  of  science,  M.  Comte  thus 
shows  the  intimate  relation  between  physics  on  one  side  of  chemis 
try,  and  physiology  on  the  other  : — 

"  By  the  important  series  of  electro-chemical  phenomena  chemis 
try  becomes,  as  it  were,  a  prolongation  of  physics  :  and  at  its  other 
extremity,  it  lays  the  foundation  of  physiology  by  its  research  into 
organic  combinations.  These  relations  are  so  real  that  it  has 
sometimes  happened  that  chemists,  untrained  in  the  philosophy  of 
science,  have  been  uncertain  whether  a  particular  subject  lay  within 
their  department,  or  ought  to  be  referred  either  to  physics  or  to 
physiology."* 

As  yet,  he  is  of  opinion  that  "  the  direct  dependence  of  chemis 
try  on  astronomy"  is  very  slight,  but  "  when  the  time  shall  come 
for  the  development  of  concrete  chemistry,  that  is,  the  methodical 
application  of  chemical  knowledge  to  the  natural  history  of  the 
globe,  astronomical  considerations  will  no  doubt  enter  in  where 
now  there  seems  no  point  of  contact  between  the  two  sciences. 
Geology,  immature  as  it  is,  hints  to  us  such  a  future  necessity, 
some  vague  instinct  of  which  was  probably  in  the  minds  of  philoso 
phers  in  the  theological  age,  when  they  were  fancifully  and  yet 
obstinately  bent  on  uniting  astrology  and  alchemy.  It  is,  in  fact, 
impossible  to  conceive  of  the  great  intestinal  operations  of  the 
globe  as  radically  independent  of  its  planetary  conditions,  "f 

Passing  thus  from  the  masses  of  physics  through  the  atoms  into 
which  they  are  resolved  by  chemistry,  we  next  find  those  atoms 
arranging  themselves  in  organized  and  living  forms,  and  consti 
tuting  the  still  more  special  subjects  of  vegetable,  animal,  and 
human  physiology,  whose  connection  with  chemistry  is  thus  de 
scribed  : — 

"  Physiology  depends  upon  chemistry  both  as  a  point  of  de 
parture  and  as  a  principal  means  of  investigation.  If  we  separate 
the  phenomena  of  life,  properly  so  called,  from  those  of  animality, 
it  is  clear  that  the  first,  in  the  double  intestinal  movement  which 

*  Positive  Philosophy,  Martineau's  Translation,  vol.  i.  298. 
f  Ibid.,  vol.  i.  299. 


16  CHAPTER  I.   §  2. 

characterizes  them,  are  essentially  chemical.  The  processes  which 
result  from  organization  have  peculiar  characteristics ;  but  apart 
from  such  modifications,  they  are  necessarily  subjected  to  the 
general  laws  of  chemical  effects.  Even  in  studying  living  bodies 
under  a  simply  statical  point  of  view,  chemistry  is  of  indis 
pensable  use  in  enabling  us  to  distinguish  with  precision  the 
different  anatomical  elements  of  any  organism."* 

Again,  in  treating  of  biology,  he  says  : — 

"  It  is  to  chemistry  that  biology  is,  by  its  nature,  most  directly 
and  completely  subordinated.  In  analyzing  the  phenomenon  of 
life,  we  saw  that  the  fundamental  acts  which,  by  their  perpetuity, 
characterize  that  state,  consist  of  a  series  of  compositions  and 
decompositions  ;  and  they  are  therefore  of  a  chemical  nature. 
Though  in  the  most  imperfect  organisms,  vital  reactions  are  widely 
separated  from  common  chemical  effects,  it  is  not  the  less  true 
that  all  the  functions  of  the  proper  organic  life  are  necessarily 
controlled  by  those  fundamental  laws  of  composition  and  decompo 
sition  which  constitute  the  subject  of  chemical  science.  If  we 
could  conceive  throughout  the  whole  scale  the  same  separation  of 
the  organic  from  the  animal  life  that  we  see  in  vegetables  alone, 
the  vital  motion  would  offer  only  chemical  conceptions,  except  the 
essential  circumstances  which  distinguish  such  an  order  of  molecu 
lar  reactions.  The  general  source  of  these  important  differences 
is,  in  my  opinion,  to  be  looked  for  in  the  result  of  each  chemical 
conflict  not  depending  only  on  the  simple  composition  of  the 
bodies  between  which  it  takes  place,  but  being  modified  by  their 
proper  organization  ;  that  is,  by  their  anatomical  structure.  Che 
mistry  must  clearly  furnish  the  starting-point  of  every  rational 
theory  of  nutrition,  secretion,  and,  in  short,  all  the  functions  of  the 
vegetative  life,  considered  separately ;  each  of  which  is  controlled 
by  the  influence  of  chemical  laws,  except  for  the  special  modifica 
tions  belonging  to  organic  conditions."! 

It  is  not,  however,  with  chemistry  alone  that  physiology  is  con 
nected.  Remote  from  astronomy  as  that  department  of  knowledge 
appears  to  be,  the  relation  between  them  "  is  more  important," 
says  M.  Comte,  "than  is  usually  supposed.  I  mean," continues  he, 


*  Positive  Philosophy,  Martineau's  Translation,  vol.  i.  p. 
f  Ibid.,  vol.  i.  p.  379. 


300. 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  17 

"  something  more  than  the  impossibility  of  understanding  the  theory 
of  weight,  and  its  effects  upon  the  organism,  apart  from  the  con 
sideration  of  general  gravitation.  I  mean,  besides,  and  more  spe 
cially,  that  it  is  impossible  to  form  a  scientific  conception  of  the 
conditions  of  vital  existence  without  taking  into  the  account  the 
aggregate  astronomical  elements  that  characterize  the  planet  which 
is  the  home  of  that  vital  existence.  We  shall  see  more  fully,  in 
the  next  volume,  how  humanity  is  affected  by  these  astronomical 
conditions ;  but  we  must  cursorily  review  these  relations  in  the 
present  connection. 

"  The  astronomical  data  proper  to  our  planet  are,  of  course, 
statical  and  dynamical.  The  biological  importance  of  the  statical 
conditions  is  immediately  obvious.  No  one  questions  the  import 
ance  to  vital  existence  of  the  mass  of  our  planet  in  comparison 
with  that  of  the  sun,  which  determines  the  intensity  of  gravity  ; 
or  of  its  form,  which  regulates  the  direction  of  the  force  ;  or  of  the 
fundamental  equilibrium  and  the  regular  oscillations  of  the  fluids 
which  cover  the  greater  part  of  its  surface,  and  with  which  the 
existence  of  living  beings  is  closely  implicated  ;  or  of  its  dimen 
sions,  which  limit  the  indefinite  multiplication  of  races,  and 
especially  the  human  ;  or  of  its  distance  from  the  centre  of  our 
system,  which  chiefly  determines  its  temperature.  Any  sudden 
change  in  one  or  more  of  these  conditions  would  largely  modify 
the  phenomena  of  life.  But  the  influence  of  the  dynamical  condi 
tions  of  astronomy  on  biological  study  is  yet  more  important. 
Without  the  two  conditions  of  the  fixity  of  the  poles  as  a  centre  of 
rotation,  and  the  uniformity  of  the  angular  velocity  of  the  earth, 
there  would  be  a  continual  perturbation  of  the  organic  media  which 
would  be  incompatible  with  life.  Bichat  pointed  out  that  the 
intermittence  of  the  proper  animal  life  is  subordinate  in  its  periods 
to  the  diurnal  rotation  of  our  planet ;  and  we  may  extend  the 
observation  to  all  the  periodical  phenomena  of  any  organisms,  in 
both  the  normal  and  pathological  states,  allowance  being  made  for 
secondary  and  transient  influences.  Moreover,  there  is  every 
reason  to  believe  that,  in  every  organism,  the  total  duration  of 
life  and  of  its  chief  natural  phases  depends  on  the  angular  velocity 
proper  to  our  planet ;  for  we  are  authorized  to  admit  that,  other 
things  being  equal,  the  duration  of  life  must  be  shorter,  especially 
in  the  animal  organism,  in  proportion  as  the  vital  phenomena 


18  CHAPTER  I.  §  2. 

succeed  each  other  more  rapidly.  If  the  earth  were  to  rotate 
much  faster,  the  course  of  physiological  phenomena  would  be 
accelerated  in  proportion  ;  and  thence  life  would  be  shorter ;  so 
that  the  duration  of  life  may  be  regarded  as  dependent  on  the 
duration  of  the  day.  If  the  duration  of  the  year  were  changed, 
the  life  of  the  organism  would  again  be  affected  :  but  a  yet  more 
striking  consideration  is  that  vital  existence  is  absolutely  impli 
cated  with  the  form  of  the  earth's  orbit,  as  has  been  observed 
before.  If  that  ellipse  were  to  become,  instead  of  nearly  circular, 
as  eccentric  as  the  orbit  of  a  comet,  both  the  medium  and  the 
organism  would  undergo  a  change  fatal  to  vital  existence.  Thus 
the  small  eccentricity  of  the  earth's  orbit  is  one  of  the  main  condi 
tions  of  biological  phenomena,  almost  as  necessary  as  the  stability 
of  the  earth's  rotation  :  and  every  other  element  of  the  annual 
motion  exercises  an  influence,  more  or  less  marked,  on  biological 
conditions,  though  not  so  great  as  the  one  we  have  adduced.  The 
inclination  of  the  plane  of  the  orbit,  for  instance,  determines  the 
division  of  the  earth  into  climates,  and,  consequently,  the  geo 
graphical  distribution  of  living  species,  animal  and  vegetable. 
And  again,  through  the  alternation  of  seasons,  it  influences  the 
phases  of  individual  existence  in  all  organisms  ;  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  life  would  be  affected  if  the  revolution  of  the  line  of  the 
nodes  were  accelerated ;  so  that  its  being  nearly  immovable  has  some 
biological  value.  These  considerations  indicate  how  necessary  it  is 
for  biologists  to  inform  themselves  accurately,  and  without  any  inter 
vention,  of  the  real  elements  proper  to  the  astronomical  constitu 
tion  of  our  planet.  An  inexact  knowledge  will  not  suffice.  The 
laws  of  the  limits  of  variation  of  the  different  elements,  or,  at  least, 
a  scientific  analysis  of  the  chief  grounds  of  their  permanence,  are 
essential  to  biological  investigation  ;  and  these  can  be  obtained 
only  through  an  acquaintance  with  astronomical  conceptions,  both 
geometrical  and  mechanical. 

"It  may  at  first  appear  anomalous,  and  a  breach  of  the  encyclo 
pedical  arrangement  of  the  sciences,  that  astronomy  and  biology 
should  be  thus  immediately  and  eminently  connected,  while  two 
other  sciences  lie  between.  But,  indispensable  as  are  physics  and 
chemistry,  astronomy  and  biology  are,  by  their  nature,  the  two 
priucipal  branches  of  natural  philosophy.  They,  the  complements 
of  each  other,  include  in  their  rational  harmony  the  general  system 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  19 

of  our  fundamental  conceptions.  The  solar  system  and  Man  are 
the  extreme  terms  within  which  our  ideas  will  forever  be  included. 
The  system  first,  and  then  Man,  according  to  the  positive  course 
of  our  speculative  reason  :  and  the  reverse  in  the  active  process  : 
the  laws  of  the  system  determining  those  of  Man,  and  remaining 
unaffected  by  them.  Between  these  two  poles  of  natural  philoso 
phy  the  laws  of  physics  interpose,  as  a  kind  of  complement  of  the 
astronomical  laws  ;  and  again,  those  of  chemistry,  as  an  immediate 
preliminary  of  the  biological.  Such  being  the  rational  and  indis 
soluble  constitution  of  these  sciences,  it  becomes  apparent  why  I 
insisted  on  the  subordination  of  the  study  of  Man  to  that  of  the 
system,  as  the  primary  philosophical  characteristic  of  positive 
biology." 

Passing  now  towards  the  more  concrete  and  special  department 
of  knowledge  treating  of  the  relation  of  man  with  his  fellow-man 
and  with  the  earth  from  which  he  derives  his  means  of  support, 
we  find  chemistry  laying  the  foundation  for  it  when  "  abolishing 
the  idea  of  destruction  and  creation,"*  and  thus  establishing  the 
facts  that  the  consumption  of  food  is  but  a  necessary  step  towards 
its  reproduction — that  in  all  the  processes  of  agriculture  man  is 
but  making  a  machine  which  supports  him  while  engaged  in 
making  it — that  the  more  time  and  mind  he  devotes  to  the  develop 
ment  of  the  powers  of  the  earth,  the  greater  must  be  his  power  of 
consumption,  and  that  the  more  rapidly  the  consumption  of  food 
follows  its  production  the  greater  will  be  the  reproduction  of  the 
elements  required  for  new  supplies  thereof.  These  views  of  the 
effect  of  the  principle  thus  established  do  not  appear  to  have 
occurred  to  M.  Comte,  but  he  shows  clearly  the  direct  connection 
of  chemical  and  social  science  when  telling  his  readers  that  "  before 
anything  was  known  of  gaseous  materials  and  products,  many 
striking  appearances  must  inevitably  have  inspired  the  idea  of  the 
real  annihilation  or  production  of  matter  in  the  general  system  of 
nature.  These  ideas  could  not  yield  to  the  true  conception  of 
decomposition  and  composition  till  we  had  decomposed  air  and 
water,  and  then  analyzed  vegetable  and  animal  substances,  and 
then  finished  with  the  analysis  of  alkalies  and  earths,  thus  exhibit 
ing  the  fundamental  principle  of  the  indefinite  perpetuity  of  matter. 

*  Positive  Philosophy,  Martineau's  Translation,  p.  305. 


20  CHAPTER  I.   §  2. 

In  vital  phenomena,  the  chemical  examination  of  not  only  the 
substances  of  living  bodies,  but  their  functions, — imperfect  as  it 
yet  is, — must  cast  a  strong  light  upon  the  economy  of  vital  nature 
by  showing  that  no  organic  matter  radically  heterogeneous  to 
inorganic  matter  can  exist,  and  that  vital  transformations  are 
subject,  like  all  others,  to  the  universal  laws  of  chemical  phe 
nomena." 

It  is  scarcely  possible  to  study  these  facts  without  arriving  at  a 
belief  in  the  universality  of  the  laws  governing  matter,  whatever 
form  that  matter  may  take,  whether  that  of  clay,  coal,  iron,  wheat, 
or  man — whether  aggregated  in  the  form  of  systems  of  mountains, 
or  in  that  of  vast  communities  of  men.  We  can  conceive  of 
no  body  without  weight,  nor  would  it  be  possible  to  imagine  any 
one  not  in  subjection  to  the  law  of  the  composition  of  forces. 
Chemistry  and  physiology,  more  concrete  and  special  than  physics, 
furnish  additional  laws,  but  always  in  subordination  to  those 
governing  the  masses  from  which  had  been  derived  the  atoms 
treated  of  in  those  departments  of  human  knowledge.  Chemistry 
aids  in  the  development  of  physics,  while  the  researches  of  physio 
logists  are  steadily  making  new  demands  upon,  and  thereby  pro 
moting  the  growth  of,  chemical  science.  Each  helps,  and  is 
helped  by,  the  other. 

The  root,  the  stem,  the  branches,  the  leaves,  and  the  blossoms 
of  the  tree  are  obedient  to  the  same  system  of  laws.  Colored 
water  applied  to  the  root  changes  the  color  of  the  blossom,  and 
stoppage  of  nourishment  to  the  root  destroys  the  tree.  It  is  but 
a  single  tree,  and  so  it  is  with  the  tree  of  science,  whose  root  is 
found  in  physics,  while  its  stem  branches  into  those  divisions  which 
are  based  upon  observation  and  experiment,  leaving  us  to  find  the 
leaves,  the  blossoms,  and  the  fruit  in  the  less  demonstrable  depart 
ments  of  knowledge. 

That  this  is  true  as  regards  the  more  abstract  and  general  portions 
of  science  to  which  reference  has  thus  far  been  made,  can  scarcely 
now  be  doubted.  Wherefore,  then,  should  we  doubt  that  it  would 
be  found  equally  so  in  relation  to  those  more  concrete  and  special 
ones  treating  of  man  in  his  relation  with  the  material  world — 
of  man  in  his  relations  with  his  fellow-man — of  man  as  a  being 
capable  of  acquiring  power  over  the  various  natural  forces  pro 
vided  for  his  use,  and  responsible,  to  his  fellow-men,  and  to  his 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  21 

Creator,  for  the  proper  use  of  the  faculties  with  which  he  has  been 
so  wonderfully  endowed  ?  If  the  root,  the  stem,  and  the  branches 
obey  the  same  laws,  should  we  not  find  the  blossoms  and  the 
fruit  of  the  tree  of  science  equally  obedient  to  them,  and  will  not 
the  diagram  opposite  represent  with  considerable  accuracy  the 
relation  of  the  various  departments  of  knowledge  and  the  order 
of  their  development  ? 

§  3.  "The  distributions  and  partitions  of  knowledge,"  says  Lord 
Bacon  in  his  Novum  Organum,  "  are  not  like  several  lines  that 
meet  in  one  angle,  and  touch  but  in  a  point ;  but  are  like  branches 
of  a  tree  that  meet  in  a  stem,  which  hath  a  dimension  and  quantity 
of  entireness  and  continuance  before  it  comes  to  discontinuance 
and  break  itself  into  arms  and  boughs  ;  therefore,"  as  he  continues, 
"it  is  good  before  we  enter  into  the  former  distribution,  to  create 
and  constitute  one  universal  science  by  the  name  of  Philosophia 
Prima,  or  Summary  Philosophy,  as  the  main  or  common  way, 
before  we  come  where  the  ways  part  and  divide  themselves." 

Concerned  as  he  was  with  the  order  and  division  of  the  sciences, 
and  pledged  as  he  was  in  the  introduction  to  his  work  to  furnish 
it,  he  failed  to  do  so,  "  the  first  part  of  the  Introduction  which 
comprehends  the  division  of  the  sciences"  being,  says  his  editor, 
"  wanting."  A  study,  so  far  as  the  idea  of  the  text  appeared  to 
the  latter  to  require  elucidation,  rather  than  an  attempt  to  supply 
the  deficiency,  is  submitted  in  its  stead. 

The  several  branches  of  natural  science  are  commonly  spoken  of, 
but  the  figure  has  a  larger  parallelism  with  the  subject,  a  tree  having 
not  only  branches  but  also  roots.  These  latter  are  properly  under 
ground  branches,  constituting  the  structural  support,  and  furnish 
ing  the  vital  subsistence  of  the  tree,  which  grows  from  its  roots 
and  with  them.  Its  stem,  branches,  flowers,  and  fruits,  being  con 
verted  aliment  supplied  by  and  through  the  roots,  the  allusions  of 
the  figure  are  in  good  keeping  with  the  natural  history  of  the  sub 
ject  intended  to  be  illustrated. 

The  central  or  taproot,  as  the  reader  sees,  represents  matter, 
with  its  essential  properties  of  inertia,  impenetrability,  divisibility, 
and  attraction.  The  lateral  ones  stand,  on  one  side,  for  mechani 
cal  and  chemical  forces,  and  on  the  other,  for  vegetable  and  animal 
ones — and  from  these  substantive  roots  of  being  rises  the  stem  man, 


22  CHAPTER  I.  §  3. 

so  composed  as  to  his  natural  constitution.  The  soul,  being  the 
occult  life  of  the  structure,  is  incapable  of  representation,  though 
manifested  by  its  proper  evidence  in  the  flowers  and  fruits,  the 
emotions  and  thoughts  of  his  faculties. 

We  have  now  the  stem — the  man — "  having  dimension  and 
quantity  of  entireness  and  continuance  before  it  came  to  discon 
tinue  and  break  itself,"  branching  off  into  his  diverse  activities. 
These  branches  are  his  functions,  ramifying  into  all  their  specific 
differences  of  application.  The  first  branch  on  the  material  side 
is  Physics,  as  represented  in  the  drawing.  Its  ramifications  are 
into  natural  philosophy  and  chemistry — masses  and  atoms — and 
the  shoots  from  these  are  mechanics  and  chemical  dynamics — the 
one  being  the  action  of  masses  and  the  other  that  of  atoms. 

The  main  branch  on  the  vital  side  of  the  tree,  rising  a  little 
above  Physics,  must  necessarily  be  Organology,  branching  first  into 
the  science  of  vegetable  beings,  Phytology,  and  sending  off  the 
shoot,  Vegetable  Physiology ;  and  second,  into  that  of  animal 
beings,  Zoology,  leading  to  Biology,  or  the  science  of  life. 

Following  the  stem  in  the  natural  order  of  rank  and  successive 
development,  it  is  seen  next  giving  off  Social  Science,  which  divides 
itself  into  Jurisprudence  and  Political  Economy,  while  on  the  cor 
responding  side  the  main  branch,  Psychology,  ramifies  itself  into 
Ethics  and  Theology — and  the  tree  finally  tops  out  with  Intuition 
as  the  material  branch  and  Inspiration  as  the  vital  one.  These 
highest  and  last  named,  are  rightly  the  source  of  the  other  science 
or  sciences  to  which  Bacon  alludes  as  standing  above  Metaphysics, 
when  he  says  that,  "as  for  the  vertical  point,  the  summary  law 
of  nature,  we  know  not  whether  man's  inquiry  can  attain  unto  it" 
— that  is,  so  as  to  order  and  methodize  its  teachings. 

In  this  scheme  of  the  sciences  of  things,  there  is  no  place  for 
either  Logic  or  Mathematics,  the  respective  regulative  sciences  of 
mind  and  matter.  Neither  of  these  belongs  to  Natural  History, 
being  both  alike  mere  instruments  to  be  used  in  the  study  of 
nature. 

Historically,  the  top  branches  of  the  tree  of  knowledge,  as  of  all 
other  trees,  are  first  produced,  and  the  branches  next  below  are 
soon  put  forth,  but  mature  later,  the  instincts  of  religion  and 
reason  appearing  in  their  vigor  in  the  childhood  of  the  race.  So 
cial  science,  necessarily,  and  metaphysics,  spontaneously,  extend 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  23 

themselves  as  early  as  societies  take  form,  and  speculation  is 
awakened — and  they  bring  forth  quickly  the  flowers  and  fruits  of 
music,  poetry,  the  fine  arts,  logic,  mathematics,  and  those  generali 
ties  of  speculative  truth  which  are  the  products  of  imagination  and 
reflection.  The  correspondence  between  the  figure  chosen  and  the 
facts  to  be  illustrated  would  seem  to  be  complete. 

In  time,  the  branches  nearer  to  the  earth,  more  material  in  their 
substance  and  more  dependent  upon  observation,  obtain  develop 
ment  in  their  larger  diversity  of  use.  The  sciences  of  substance,  of 
natural  objects,  grow  and  ramify  themselves  almost  indefinitely — 
physical  philosophy  and  organology,  in  their  dependencies,  shoot 
ing  out  in  every  direction  of  observation  and  experiment,  at  first 
overshadowed  by  the  speculative  branches  above  them,  but  always 
vivified  by  them ;  while  in  their  turn  repaying  this  service  by  afford 
ing  substantive  strength  and  corrective  modification  as  they  grow 
into  maturity. 

Such  is  the  history  of  science,  and  such  the  illustration  of  its 
orderly  divisions,  succession,  and  co-ordination  ;  it  represents  the 
compound  nature  of  man,  the  sources  of  his  powers,  and  the  order 
of  their  development. 

§  4.  Man  seeks  to  obtain  power  over  matter,  and  therefore  is  it 
that  he  desires  to  obtain  a  knowledge  of  the  laws  that  have  been 
instituted  for  its  government.  To  become  the  subject  of  law  it  is 
required  that  there  should  be  a  regular  and  uniform  succession  of 
causes  and  effects,  the  nature  of  which  may  be  expressed  in  several 
propositions — so  that  when  we  observe  the  former  we  may  be 
enabled  to  predict  the  latter,  or  when  the  latter  are  observed  we 
may  safely  assume  the  former  to  have  pre-existed. 

In  the  early  ages  of  society  theories  abound,  and  they  do  so 
because,  in  default  of  knowledge,  almost  every  occurrence  is  "  re 
garded  as  accidental,  or  is  attributed  to  the  direct  interposition  of 
mythological  powers,  whose  qualities  are  so  vaguely  conceived  as 
to  make  the  idea  of  the  events  depending  upon  their  action  scarcely 
one  remove  from  that  of  its  being  absolutely  fortuitous  and  irre 
ducible  to  order  and  rule" — and  thus  it  was  that  the  Greeks  of  the 
days  of  Homer  were  seen  soliciting  the  aid  of  imaginary  deities, 
who  were  moved  to  action  by  the  same  feelings  and  passions  that 
influenced  their  worshippers;  precisely  as  does  now  the  poor  Afri- 


26  CHAPTER  I.  §  4. 

that  development  can  take  place  no  otherwise  than  by  our  forma 
tion  of  the  science  as  a  whole."* 

"  In  the  organic  sciences,  the  elements  are  much  better  known 
to  us  than  the  whole  which  they  constitute  :  so  that  in  that  case  we 
must  proceed  from  the  simple  t©  the  compound.  But  the  reverse 
method  is  necessary  in  the  study  of  man  and  of  society  ;  man  and 
society  as  a  whole  being  better  known  to  us,  and  more  accessible 
subjects  of  study,  than  the  parts  which  constitute  them.  In 
exploring  the  universe,  it  is  as  a  whole  that  it  is  inaccessible  to  us; 
whereas,  in  investigating  man  or  society,  our  difficulty  is  in  pene 
trating  the  details.  We  have  seen,  in  our  survey  of  biology,  that 
the  general  idea  of  animal  nature  is  more  distinct  to  our  minds 
than  the  simpler  notion  of  vegetable  nature  ;  and  that  man  is  the 
biological  unity  ;  the  idea  of  man  being  at  once  the  most  com 
pound,  and  the  starting-point  of  speculation  in  regard  to  vital 
existence.  Thus,  if  we  compare  the  two  halves  of  natural  philoso 
phy,  we  shall  find  that  in  the  one  case  it  is  the  last  degree  of  com 
position,  and,  in  the  other,  the  last  degree  of  simplicity,  that  is 
beyond  the  scope  of  our  research."! 

This  would  seem  to  be  going  back  to  what  M.  Comte  is  accus 
tomed  to  denominate  the  metaphysical  stage  of  science.  The  phi 
losopher  of  old  would,  in  like  manner,  have  said  :  "  These  masses 
of  granite  are  better  known  to  us  than  the  parts  of  which  they  are 
composed,  and  therefore  we  will  limit  our  inquiries  to  the  question 
as  to  how  they  came  to  have  their  existing  form  and  occupy 
their  present  position."  Without  the  analysis  of  the  chemist  it 
would  have  been  as  impossible  that  we  should  be  enabled  to 
"  penetrate  into  the  details"  of  the  piece  of  stone,  and  thus  to 
acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  composition  of  the  distant  mountain 
from  which  it  had  been  taken,  as  it  would  now  be  for  us  to  pene 
trate  into  those  of  the  communities  that  have  passed  away,  were 
we  not  in  the  midst  of  living  ones,  composed  of  men  endowed  with 
the  same  gifts  and  animated  by  the  same  feelings  and  passions 
observed  to  have  existed  among  the  men  of  ancient  times  ;  and  were 
we  not,  too,  possessors  of  the  numerous  facts  accumulated  during 
the  many  centuries  that  since  have  intervened.  It  is  the  details  of 


*  Positive  Philosophy,  Martineau's  Translation,  vol.  ii.  p.  81. 
f  Ibid.,  vol.  ii.  p.  82. 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  2T 

life  around  us  that  we  need  to  study,  commencing  by  analysis  and 
proceeding  to  synthesis,  as  does  the  chemist  when  he  resolves  the 
piece  of  granite  into  atoms,  and  thus  acquires  the  secret  of  the  com 
position  of  the  mass.  Having  ascertained  that  it  is  composed  of 
quartz,  feldspar,  and  mica,  and  having  fully  satisfied  himself  of  the 
circumstances  under  which  it  appears  in  the  country  around  him, 
he  feels  entire  confidence  that  wherever  else.it  may  be  found,  its 
composition,  and  its  position  in  the  order  of  formation,  will  be  the 
same.  He  is  constantly  going  from  the  near  and  the  known, 
which  he  can  analyze  and  examine,  to  the  distant  and  the  unknown, 
which  he  cannot ;  studying  the  latter  by  means  of  formulas  obtained 
by  analysis  of  the  former.  Thus  it  was  that  by  study  of  the 
deposits  of  Siberia  and  California,  the  geologist  was  enabled  to 
predict  that  gold  would  be  found  among  the  mountains  of  Aus 
tralia.  _ir"i. 

If  we  desire  to  understand  the  history  of  man  in  past  ages,  or  in  I 
distant  lands,  we  must  commence  by  studying  him  in  the  present,  ' 
and  having  mastered  him  in  the  past  and  present,  we  may  then  be 
enabjed  to  predict  the  future.     To  do  this,  it  is  required  that  we 
should  do  with  society  as  the  chemist  does  with  the  piece  of  gra 
nite,  resolve  it  into  its  several  parts  and  study  each  part  separately, 
ascertaining  how  it  would  act  were  it  left  to  itself,  and  comparing 
what  would  be  its  independent  action   with  that  we  see  to  be  its 
action  in  society  ;  and  then  by  help  of  the  same  law  of  which  the 
mathematician,  the  physicist,  the  chemist,  and  the  physiologist, 
avail   themselves — that   of  the   composition   of   forces — we   may 
arrive  at  the  law  of  the  effect.     To  do  this  would  not,  however,  be 
to  adopt  the  course  of  M.  Comte,  who  gives  us  the  distant  and 
the  unknown — the   societies  of  past  ages — as  a  means  of  under 
standing  the  movements  of  the  men  by  whom  we  are  surrounded,    ' 
and  of  predicting  what  will  be  those  of  future  men.     "With  great_j 
respect  for  M.  Comte,  we  must  say  that  to  pursue  this  course 
appears  to  us  to  be  equivalent  to  furnishing  his  readers  with  a  tele 
scope  by  which  to  study  the  mountains  of  the  moon  for  the  purpose 
of  understanding  the  movements  of  the  laboratory. 

The  necessary  consequence  of  this  inverse  and  erroneous  method 
is  that  he  is  led  to  arrive  at  conclusions  directly  the  reverse  of 
those  to  which  men's  natural  instincts  lead  them ;  and  directly 
opposed,  too,  to  the  tendencies  of  thought  and  action  in  all  the 


28  CHAPTER  I.   §  5. 

times  of  advancing  civilization,  whether  in  the  ancient  or  modern 
world ;  and,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  he  leaves  his  readers  as 
much  at  a  loss  to  understand  the  causes  of  disturbance  that  now 
exist,  or  the  remedy  required  to  be  applied,  as  would  a  physician 
who  should  limit  the  study  of  his  patient  to  an  examination  of  the 
body  in  a  mass,  omitting  all  inquiry  into  the  state  of  the  lungs,  the 
'stomach,  or  the  brain.  His  system  of  sociology  does  not  explain 
the  past,  and  cannot  therefore  be  used  to  direct  the  future ;  and 
the  reason  why  it  does  not  and  cannot  is,  that  he  has  declined  to 
use  the  method  of  physics,  the  philosophy  which  studies  the  near  and 
the  known  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  power  to  comprehend  the 
distant  and  the  unknown — which  studies  the  present  to  obtain 
knowledge  by  help  of  which  to  understand  the  causes  of  events  in 
the  past,  and  predict  those  which  are  bound  to  flow  from  similar 
causes  in  the  future. 

§  5.  Turning  from  France  to  Britain,  we  find  ourselves  in  the 
home  of  Adam  Smith,  whose  most  essential  doctrines  have,  how 
ever,  been  wholly  repudiated  by  his  successors  of  the  modern 
school,  which  had  its  origin  in  the  teachings  of  Messrs.  Malthus 
and  Ricardo.  "  Social  science,"  as  we  are  there  taught  by  one  of 
the  most  distinguished  teachers,  and  in  opposition  to  the  views  of 
Mr.  Comte,  "is  a  deductive  science;  not  indeed,"  as  he  con 
tinues,  "  after  the  model  of  geometry,  but  after  that  of  the  highest 
physical  sciences.  It  infers  the  law  of  each  effect  from  the  laws  of 
causation  upon  which  the  effect  depends ;  not,  however,  from  the 
law  merely  of  one  cause,  as  in  the  geometrical  method,  but  by  con 
sidering  all  the  causes  which  conjointly  influence  the  effect,  and 
compounding  those  laws  with  one  another."* 

Such  is  the  theory.     What  is  the  practice  under  it,  we  may  now 
examine.     " Political  economy,"  says  the  same  author,  "considers  i 
mankind  as  occupied  solely  in  acquiring  and  consuming  wealthj 
and  aims  at  showing  what  is  the  course  of  action  into  which  man 
kind,  living  in  a  state  of  society,  would  be  impelled,  if  that  motive, 
except  in  the  degree  in  which  it  is  checked  by  the  two  perpetual 
counter  motives  above  adverted  to — aversion  to  labor  and  the  de 
sire  of  the  present  enjoyment  of  costly  indulgences — were   abso 
lute  ruler  of  all  their  actions.     Under  the  influence  of  this  desire, 

*  J.  S.  Mill.     System  of  Logic,  Book  vi.  ch.  8. 

h- 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  29 

it  shows  mankind  accumulating  wealth,  and  employing  this  wealth 
in  the  production  of  other  wealth  ;  sanctioning  by  mutual  agree 
ment  the  institution  of  property;  establishing  laws  to  prevent  indi 
viduals  from  encroaching  on  the  property  of  others  by  force  or 
fraud  ;  adopting  various  contrivances  for  increasing  the  produc 
tiveness  of  their  labor ;  settling  the  division  of  the  produce  by- 
agreement,  under  the  influence  of  competition,  *  *  and  employ 
ing  certain  expedients  *  *  to  facilitate  the  distribution.  AlPI 
these  operations,  though  many  of  them  are  really  the  result  of  a 
plurality  of  motives,  are  considered  by  political  economy  as  flow 
ing  solely  from  a  desire  of  wealth.  *  *  *  *  Not  that  any 
political  economist  was  ever  so  absurd  as  to  suppose  that  man 
kind  are  really  thus  constituted,  but  because  this  is  the  mode  in 


xwhich  the  science  must  necessarily  be  studied."* 


"  For  the  sake  of  practical  utility,"  however,  the  principle  of 
population  is  required  to  be  "  interpolated  into  the  exposition,"  and 
this  is  done,  although  to  do  so  involves,  as  we  are  told,  a  depar 
ture  from  "the  strictness  of  purely  scientific  arrangement,  "f 

That  having  been  done,  we  have  the  politico-economical  man, 
on  one  hand  influenced  solely  by  the  thirst  for  wealth,  and  on  the 
other  so  entirely  under  the  control  of  the  sexual  passion  as  to  be 
at  all  times  ready  to  indulge  it,  however  greatly  such  indulgence 
may  tend  to  prevent  the  growth  of  wealth. 

What,  however,  is  this  thing  in  the  quest  for  which  he  is  so  assi 
duously  engaged  ?  What  is  wealth  ?  To  this  question  political 
economy  furnishes  no  reply,  it  having  never  yet  been  settled  in 
what  it  is  that  wealth  consists.  Were  it  suggested  that  land  con 
stituted  any  part  thereof,  the  answer  would  at  once  be  made  that 
by  reason  of  a  great  law  of  nature,  the  more  of  it  that  was  brought 
into  use,  and  the  larger  the  quantity  of  labor  given  to  its  improve 
ment,  the  less  must  be  the  return  to  human  effort,  the  poorer  must 
the  community  become,  and  the  greater  must  be  the  tendency 
towards  poverty  and  death — and  that  such  must  certainly  be  the 
case  could  readily  be  proved  by  passages  from  writers  of  high 
authority.  Were  it  next  assumed  that  wealth  might  be  found  in 
the  development  of  the  individual  faculties,  proof  sufficient  could 
be  furnished  that  not  only  would  any  search  in  that  direction  be 

*  J.  S.  Mill.      Sustem  of  Logic,  Book  vi.  cli.  8. 
f  Ibid. 


30  CHAPTER  I.  §  5. 

vain,  but  that  it  would  result  in  the  establishment  of  the  fact  that 
any  increase  in  the  number  of  teachers  must  be  attended  with  dimi 
nution  of  the  quantity  of  wealth  at  the  command  of  the  community. 
Foiled  thus  in  all  his  efforts,  the  inquirer,  after  having  studied 
carefully  all  the  books,  would  still  be  found  repeating  the  question 
—What  is  wealth  ? 

Turning  next  to  the  being  so  sedulously  engaged  in  the  pursuit 
of  an  undefined  something  that  seems  to  embrace  so  much,  and  that 
yet  excludes  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  things  usually  regarded  as 
wealth,  he  would  desire  to  satisfy  himself  if  the  subject  of  politi 
cal  economy  was  really  the  being  known  as  man.  He  might  per 
haps  ask  himself,  has  man  no  other  qualities  than  those  here 
attributed  to  him  ?  Is  he,  like  the  beasts  of  the  field,  solely  given 
to  the  search  for  food  and  shelter  for  his  body?  Does  he,  like 
them,  beget  children  for  the  sole  gratification  of  his  passions,  and 
does  he,  like  them,  leave  his  offspring  to  feed  and  shelter  themselves 
as  they  may  ?  Has  he  no  feelings  or  affections  to  be  influenced  by 
the  care  of  wife  and  children  ?  Has  he  no  judgment  to  aid  him  in 
the  decision  as  to  what  is  likely  to  benefit  or  to  injure  him  ?  That 
he  did  possess  these  qualities  he  would  find  admitted,  but  the  econ 
omist  would  assure  him  that  his  science  was  that  of  material  wealth 
alone,  to  the  entire  exclusion  of  the  wealth  of  affection  and  of  intel 
lect  held  by  Adam  Smith  in  such  high  esteem — and  thus  would 
he,  at  the  close  of  all  his  search,  discover  that  the  subject  of 
political  economy  was  not  really  a  man,  but  an  imaginary  being 
moved  to  action  by  the  blindest  passion,  and  giving  all  his  ener 
gies  to  the  pursuit  of  a  thing  in  its  nature  so  undefinable  that  all 
the  books  in  use  might  be  searched  for  a  definition  that  would  be 
admitted  by  a  jury  of  economists  as  embracing  all  that  should  be 
included,  and  excluding  all  that  should  not. 

The  law  of  the  composition  of  forces  requires  that  we  should 
study  all  the  causes  tending  to  produce  a  given  effect.  That  effect 
is  MAN — the  man  of  the  past  and  the  present ;  and  the  social  phi 
losopher  who  excludes  from  consideration  his  feelings  and  affections, 
and  the  intellect  with  which  he  has  been  endowed,  makes  precisely 
the  same  mistake  that  would  be  made  by  the  physical  one  who 
should  look  exclusively  to  gravitation,  forgetting  heat ;  and  should 
thence  conclude  that  at  no  distant  day  the  whole  material  of  which 
the  earth  is  composed  would  become  a  solid  mass,  plants,  ani- 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  31 

mals  and  men  having  disappeared.  Such  is  the  error  of  modern 
political  economy,  and  its  effects  are  seen  in  the  fact  that  it  pre 
sents  for  our  consideration  a  mere  brute  animal,  to  find  a  name  for 
which  it  desecrates  the  word  "man,"  recognized  by  Adam  Smith 
as  expressing  the  idea  of  a  being  made  in  the  likeness  of  its  Creator. 
It  was  well  asked  by  Goethe — "  What  is  all  intercourse  with 
nature,  if  by  the  analytical  method,  we  merely  occupy  ourselves  with 
individual  material  parts,  and  do  not  feel  the  breath  of  the  spirit 
which  prescribes  to  every  part  its  direction,  and  orders  or  sanc 
tions  every  deviation  by  means  of  an  inherent  law  ?"  And  what, 
we  may  ask,  is  the  value  of  an  analytical  process  that  selects  only 
the  "material  parts"  of  man — those  which  are  common  to  him 
self  and  the  beast — and  excludes  those  common  to  the  angels  and 
himself?  Such  is  the  course  of  modern  political  economy,  which 
not  only  does  not  "feel  the  breath  of  the  spirit,"  but  even  ignores 
the  existence  of  the  spirit  itself,  and  is  therefore  found  defining 
what  it  is  pleased  to  call  the  natural  rate  of  wages,  as  being  "that 
price  which  is  necessary  to  enable  the  laborers,  one  with  another, 
to  subsist  and  perpetuate  their  race,  without  either  increase  or 
diminution"* — that  is  to  say,  such  price  a£  will  enable  some  to 
grow  rich  and  increase  their  race,  while  others  perish  of  hunger, 
thirst,  and  exposure.  Such  are  the  teachings  of  a  system  that  has 
fairly  earned  the  title  of  the  "  dismal  science  " — that  one  the  study 
of  which  led  M.  Sismondi  to  the  inquiry — "What,  then,  is  wealth 
everything,  and  is  man  absolutely  nothing  ?"  In  the  eyes  of 
modern  political  economy  he  is  nothing,  and  can  be  nothing, 
because  it  takes  no  note  of  the  qualities  by  which  he  is  distinguished 
from  the  brute,  and  is  therefore  led  to  regard  him  as  being  a  mere 
instrument  to  be  used  by  capital  to  enable  its  owner  to  obtain  com 
pensation  for  its  use.  "  Some  economists,"  said  a  distinguished 
French  economist,  shocked  at  the  material  character  of  the  so- 
•called  science,  "speak  as  if  they  believed  that  men  were  made 
for  products,  not  products  for  men  ;"f  and  at  that  conclusion  must 
all  arrive  who  commence  by  the  method  of  analysis,  and  close 
with  exclusion  of  all  the  higher  and  distinctive  qualities  of  man. 

§  6.  In  the  progress  of  knowledge  we  find  ourselves  gradually 
passing  from  the  compound  to  the  simple  ;  from  that  which  is 

*  Ricardo.  f  Droz.  Economic  Politique, 


32  CHAPTER  I.  §  6. 

abstruse  and  difficult  to  that  which  is  plain  and  easily  learned: 
That  "all  simple  ideas  are  true,"  we  have  been  assured  by  Des 
cartes,  and  evidence  of  the  fact  may  everywhere  be  found  in  the 
beautiful  simplicity,  and  wonderful  breadth  of  propositions  in 
science,  themselves  the  result  of  a  long  induction,  leading  to  the 
knowledge  of  great  truths  not  at  first  perceptible,  but  when  an 
nounced  so  conclusive  as  to  close,  almost  at  once. and  forever,  all 
discussion  in  reference  to  them.  The  falling  of  the  apple  led  New 
ton  to  the  law  of  gravitation,  and  to  the  discovery  of  that  law  we 
owe  the  astonishing  perfection  of  modern  astronomy.  The  estab 
lishment  of  the  identity  of  lightning  and  electricity  laid  the  founda 
tion  of  a  science,  by  help  of  which  we  have  been  enabled  to 
command  the  services  of  a  great  power  in  nature,  that  has  super 
seded  all  the  contrivances  of  man.  Kepler  and  Galileo,  Newton 
and  Franklin,  would  have  failed  in  all  their  efforts  to  extend  the 
domain  of  science,  had  they  pursued  the  method  of  M.  Comte  in 
his  attempt  to  establish  a  system  of  social  science. 

Does  this  method,  however,  supersede  entirely  the  a  priori  one  ? 
Because  we  pursue  the  method  of  analysis,  are  we  necessarily  pre 
cluded  from  that  of  synthesis  ?  By  no  means.  The  one,  however, 
is  the  indispensable  preparation  for  the  other.  It  was  by  the 
careful  observation  of  particular  facts  that  Le  Terrier  was  led  to 
the  grand  generalization  that  a  new  and  unobserved  planet  was 
bound  to  exist,  and  in  a  certain  part  of  the  heavens,  and  there  it 
was  almost  at  once  discovered.  To  careful  analysis  of  various 
earths  it  was  due  that  Davy  was  led  to  the  announcement  of  the 
great  fact  that  all  earths  have  metallic  bases — one  of  the  grandest 
generalizations  on  record,  and  one  whose  truth  is  being  every  day 
more  and  more  established.  The  two  methods  were  well  described 
by  Goethe,  when  he  said  that  synthesis  and  analysis  were  "the  sys 
tole  and  diastole  of  human  thought,"  and  that  they  were  to  him 
"  like  a  second  breathing  process — never  separated,  ever  pulsat 
ing."  "  The  vice  of  the  d  priori  method,"  says  the  writer  from 
whom  this  passage  is  taken,  "  when  it  wanders  from  the  right 
path,  is  not  that  it  goes  before  the  facts,  and  anticipates  the  tardy 
conclusions  of  experience,  but  that  it  rests  contented  with  its  own 
verdicts,  or  seeking  only  a  partial,  hasty  confrontation  with  facts — 
what  Bacon  calls  '  notiones  temere  h,  rebus  abstractas.'  "* 

*    Westminster  Review,  Oct.  1852:  Article,  Goethe  as  a  Man  of  Science* 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  33 

*•- 

If  science  be  one  and  indivisible,  then  must  the  method  of  study 
be  one.  That  this  is  so,  with  regard  to  all  the  departments  of 
knowledge  that  underlie  social  science — physics,  chemistry,  and 
physiology — cannot  now  be  doubted,  yet  it  is  but  recently  that  ; 

there  has  been  reason  to  believe  in  any  such  connection.     Witjbt < 

each  new  discovery  the  approximation  becomes  more  close,  and  with 
each  we  see  how  intimately  are  the  facts  of  all  the  earlier  and  more 
abstract  departments  of  knowledge  connected  with  the  progress  of 
man  toward  that  state  of  high  development  for  which  he  seems  to 
have  been  intended.  From  hour  to  hour,  as  he  acquires  further 
control  over  the  various  forces  existing  in  nature,  he  is  enabled  to 
live  in  closer  connection  with  his  fellow  man — to  obtain  larger 
supplies  of  food  and  clothing — to  improve  his  own  modes  of 
thought  and  action,  and  to  furnish  better  instruction  to  the  gene 
ration  destined  to  succeed  him.  The  knowledge  that  leads  to  such 
results  is  but  the  foundation  upon  which  we  are  required  to  build, 
when  undertaking  to  construct  that  higher  department  denominated 
social  science,  and  the  instrument  that  has  been  so  successfully 
used  in  laying  the  foundation  cannot  but  be  found  equally  useful 
in  the  construction  of  the  building  itself. 

Mathematics  must  be  used  in  social  science,  as  it  is  now  in  every  j 
other  branch  of  inquiry,  and  the  more  the  former  is  used,  the  more  L? 
the  latter  takes  the  form  of  real  science,  and  the  more  intimate  are 
shown  to  be  its  relations  with  other  departments  of  knowledge.  The 
Malthusian  law  was  the  first  instance  of  its  application,  and  had  it 
proved  a  true  one,  it  would  have  given  a  precision  to  political 
economy,  of  which  before  it  had  been  utterly  incapable,  making 
the  progress  of  man  directly  dependent  upon  the  presence  or 
absence  of  certain  powers  in  the  soil  on  which  he  lived.  So,  too, 
with  Mr.  Ricardo's  celebrated  theory  of  rent,  by  which  was  esta 
blished  what  he  deemed  to  be  the  natural  division  of  the  products 
of  labor  among  the  men  who  labored,  and  those  who  superintended 
the  work,  or  those  who  owned  the  land  by  which  they  were  yielded. 
The  method  of  both  these  great  laws  was  right,  and  the  fact  of 
their  having  adopted  that  method  has  properly  placed  their  authors 
in  the  front  rank  of  economists,  and  has  given  to  their  works  an 
amount  of  influence  never  before  exercised  by  any  writers  on 
economical  science.  That  they  fell  into  the  error  above  described, 
of  "  seeking  only  a  partial,  hasty  confrontation  with  facts,"  and, 


34  .  CHAPTER  I.  §  6. 

therefore,  furnished  the  world  with  theories  directly  the  reverse  of 
truth,  does  not  prevent  us  from  seeing  of  what  infinite  advantage 
to  the  progress  of  science  it  would  have  been  to  have  had  the  facts 
brought  under  these  relations,  if  true,  nor  of  how  great  importance 
it  nyist  be  to  have  the  real  facts  brought  under  such ,  relations 
whenever  possible. 

Let  us,  for  example,  take  the  following  proposition  : — 
In  the  early  period  of  society,  when  land  is  abundant  and  people 
are  few  in  number,  labor  is  unproductive,  and  of  the  small  product, 
the  land-owner  or  other  capitalist  takes  a  large  proportion,  leaving 
to  the  laborer  a  small  one.  The  larger  proportion  yields,  how 
ever,  but  a  small  amount,  and  both  laborer  and  capitalist  are 
poor — the  former  so  poor  that  he  is  everywhere  seen  to  have 
been  a  slave  to  the  latter.  Population  and  wealth,  however,  in 
creasing,  and  labor  becoming  more  productive,  the  land-owner's 
share  diminishes  in  its  proportion,  but  increases  in  its  amount. 
The  laborer's  share  increases  not  only  in  its  amount,  but  also  in 
its  proportion,  and  the  more  rapid  the  increase  in  the  productive 
ness  of  his  labor,  the  greater  is  the  proportion  of  the  augmented 
quantity  retained  by  him ;  and  thus,  while  the  interests  of  both  are 
in  perfect  harmony  with  each  other,  there  is  a  constant  tendency 
towards  the  establishment  of  an  equality  of  condition — the  slave  of 
the  early  period  becoming  the  free  man  of  the  later  one. 

Admitting  this  to  be  true — and  if  so,  it  establishes  directly  the 
reverse  of  what  was  propounded  by  Messrs.  Malthus  and  Ricardo 
•. — we  have  here  the  distinct  expression  of  a  mathematical  relation 
between  the  concomitant  variations  of  power  of  man  and  matter — 
of  the  man  representing  only  his  own  faculties,  and  of  the  man 
representing  the  accumulated  results  of  human  faculties  upon  mat- 
I  ter  and  its  forces.  The  problem  of  social  science,  and  the  one 
attempted  to  be  solved  by  those  writers,  is,  what  are  the  relations 
of  man  and  the  outside  material  world.  They  change,  as  we  see, 
men  becoming,  in  some  countries,  from  year  to  year  more  and 
more  the  masters,  and  in  others,  the  slaves  of  nature.  In  what 
manner  is  it  that  changes  in  one  tend  to  produce  further  changes 
in  itself,  or  to  effect  changes  in  the  other  ?  To  this  question  we 
need  a  mathematical  answer,  and  until  it  shall  be  furnished — as  it  is 
believed  to  be  in  the  above  very  simple  proposition — political 
economy  can  bear  only  the  same  relation  to  social  science  that 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  35 

the  observations  of  the  Chaldean  shepherds  bear  to  modern  astro-  « 
nomy. 

Social  science  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  an  existence.  That 
it  might  exist,  it  was  required  that  we  should  first  possess  the 
physical,  chemical,  and  physiological  knowledge  enabling  us  to 
observe  how  it  is  that  man  is  enabled  to  obtain  command  over  the 
various  forces  provided  for  his  use,  and  to  pass  from  being  the 

slave,  to  becoming  the  master  of  nature.     "  Man,"  says  Goethe, Jl 

"  only  knows  himself  in  as  far  as  he  knows  external  nature,"  and  it 
was  needed  that  the  more  abstract  and  general  departments  of 
knowledge  should  acquire  a  state  of  high  development,  before  We 
could  advantageously  enter  upon  the  study  of  the  highly  concrete 
and  special,  and  infinitely  variable  science  of  the  laws  by  which 
man  is  governed  in  his  relations  with  the  external  world,  and  with 
his  fellow-man.  Chemistry  and  physiology  are  both,  however,  of 
recent  date.  A  century  since,  men  knew  nothing  of  the  composi 
tion  of  the  air  they  breathed,  and  it  is  within  that  period  that 
Haller  laid  the  foundation  of  the  physiological  science  that  now 
exists.  In  physics,  even,  the  Aristotelian  doctrine  of  the  four 
elements  had  yet  possession  of  many  of  the  schools,  and  still  pro 
bably  remains  in  some  of  those  on  the  outer  borders  of  civilization. 
In  this  state  of  things  there  could  be  but  little  progress  towards 
the  attainment  of  the  knowledge  how  far  it  was  in  the  power  of 
man  to  compel  the  earth  to  yield  the  supplies  required  for  a  stea 
dily  increasing  population ;  and  without  that  knowledge  there  could 
be  no  such  thing  as  social  science. 

Science  requires  laws,  and  laws  are  but  universal  truths — truths 
to  which  no  exceptions  can  be  found.  Those  obtained,  harmony 
and  order  take  the  place  of  chaos,  and  we  are  led  in  every 
department  of  knowledge  as  much  to  recognize  effects  as  having 
been  the  natural  results  of  certain  definite  causes,  and  to  look 
for  the  reappearance  of  similar  effects  when  like  causes  shall 
again  occur,  as  did  the  first  man  when  he  had  definitely  con 
nected  the  presence  and  absence  of  light  with  the  rising  and 
setting  of  the  sun. 

Where,  however,  is  there  in  social  science  a  proposition  whose1 
truth  is  universally  admitted  ?     There  is  not  even  a  single  one. 
A  century  since,  the  strength  of  a  nation  was  regarded  as  tending 
to  increase  with  augmentation  of  its  numbers,  but  now  we  are 


36  CHAPTER  I.   §  6. 

taught  that  increase  of  numbers  brings  with  it  weakness  instead 
of  strength.  From  year  to  year  we  have  new  theories  of  the  laws 
of x  population,  and  new  modifications  of  the  old  one — and  the 
question  of  the  laws  governing  the  distribution  of  the  proceeds  of 
labor  between  the  owner  and  occupier  of  land,  is  now  discussed 
as  vigorously  as  it  was  fifty  years  since.  Of  the  disciples  of  Mes 
sieurs  Malthus  and  Ricardo,  scarcely  any  two  are  agreed  as  to  what 
it  was  that  their  masters  really  meant  to  teach.  On  one  day  we 
are  told  that  the  Ricardo-Malthusian  doctrine  is  dead,  and  on  the 
next  we  learn  that  it  is  an  evidence  of  want  of  knowledge  to  doubt 
its^ truth  ;  and  yet  the  parties  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  all  this 
knowledge,  belong  to  the  same  politico-economical  school.*  The 
strongest  advocates  for  the  removal  of  all  restrictions  on  trade  in 
cloth  are  found  among  the  fiercest  opponents  of  freedom  in  the 
trade  in  money;  and  among  the  most  enthusiastic  friends  of  com 
petition  for  the  sale  of  merchandise,  are  to  be  found  the  most  de 
cided  opponents  of  competition  for  the  purchase  of  the  laborer's 
"Tune  and  talents.  Teachers  who  rejoice  in  everything  tending  to 
increase  the  prices  of  cloth  and  iron,  as  leading  to  improvement 
in  the  condition  of  man,  are  found  among  the  foremost  of  those 
who  deprecate  advance  in  the  price  of  the  laborer's  services,  as 
tending  to  diminution  of  power  for  the  maintenance  of  trade. 
Others  who  teach  non-interference  by  government  when  it  looks  to 
the  diffusion  of  knowledge  among  the  people,  are  among  the  most 
decided  as  to  the  propriety  of  such  interference  when  it  looks  to 
measures  leading  to  war  and  waste.  All  is  therefore  confusion, 
and  nothing  is  settled ;  as  a  necessary  consequence  of  which  the 
world  looks  quietly  on,  waiting  the  time  when  the  teachers  shall 

*  "We  believe  it  (the  Ricardo  principle  of  rent),  dominates  in  the  long 
run,  and  is  the  main  cause  of  the  decline  of  nations.  *  *  We 
believe  the  law  of  population  to  which  Malthus  first  directed  public  atten 
tion,  to  be  founded  in  fact." — London  Spectator,  Nov.  18,  1854. 

"Nobody,  except  a  few  mere  writers,  now  troubles  himself  about  Malthus 
on  population,  or  Ricardo  on  rent.  Their  error  may  yet  indeed  linger  in 
the  universities,  the  appropriate  depositories  for  what  is  obsolete." — London 
Economist,  same  date. 

"  In  fact,  this  phenomenon,  the  announcement  of  which  caused  so  much 
clamor  against  Malthus,  appears  to  me  incontestable." — Bastiat.  Harmonies 
Economiques. 

"l  The  theory  of  rent,  given  by  Ricardo,  appears  to  me  to  remain  un 
touched." — Chevalier.  De  la  Monnaie. 

"  The  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population  was  really,  and  we  must  ac 
knowledge  it,  a  revelation." — Journal  des  jEconomistes,  Oct.  1854. 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  37    , 

arrive  at  so.me  understanding  among  themselves  as  to  what  it  is    , 
that  is  to  be  believed. 

That  they  may  do  so,  it  is  essential  that  they  arrive  at  some 
such  understanding  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  various  terms  in 
common  use,  no  approach  towards  which  has  yet  been  made. 
"  The  great  defect  of  Adam  Smith,  and  of  our  economists 
in  general,"  says  Archbishop  Whateley,  "  is  the  want  of  defini 
tions,"  and  in  proof  of  this  he  gives  his  readers  the  numerous  and 
widely  different  ones  furnished  by  the  most  distinguished  teachers 
in  relation  to  the  highly  important  terms,  Yalue,  Wealth,  Labor, 
Capital,  Rents,  Wages,  and  Profits,  and  shows  that,  for  want  of 
clear  conceptions,  the  same  word  is  used  by  the  same  writer  at  one 
time  in  a  manner  totally  inconsistent  with  that  in  which  he  uses  it 
at  another.  To  that  list,  he  might,  as  he  most  truly  says,  add 
many  others  "  which  are  often  used  without  any  more  explanation, 
or  any  more  suspicion  of  their  requiring  it,  than  the  words  "tri 
angle,"  or  "twenty"* — and  as  a  consequence  of  this  it  is  that,  as 
will  be  hereafter  shown,  words  of  the  highest  importance  are  used 
by  distinguished  writers  as  being  entirely  synonymous,  when  really 
expressing  not  only  different,  but  directly  opposite  ideas. 

«u. 

§  7.  The  causes  of  the  existence  of  this  state  of  things  are  readily 
explained.  Of  all  others,  social  science  is  the  most  concrete  and 
special — the  most  dependent  on  the  earlier  and  more  abstract 
departments  of  science — the  one  in  which  the  facts  are  most  difficult 
of  collection  and  analysis — and  therefore  the  last  that  makes  its 
appearance  on  the  stage.  Of  all,  too,  it  is  the  only  one  that 
affects  the  interests  of  men,  their  feelings,  passions,  prejudices, 
and  therefore  the  one  in  which  it  is  most  difficult  to  find  men  col 
lating  facts  with  the  sole  view  to  deduce  from  them  the  knowledge 
they  are  calculated  to  afford.  Treating,  as  it  does,  of  the  relations 
between  man  and  man,  it  has  everywhere  to  meet  the  objection  of 
those  who  seek  the  enjoyment  of  power  and  privtlege  at  the  cost 
of  their  fellow-men.  The  sovereign  holds  in  small  respect 
science  that  would  teach  his  subjects  to  doubt  the  propriety  of  his 
exercise  of  power  by  the  grace  of  God.  The  soldier  cannot 
believe  in  one  that  looks  to  the  annihilation  of  his  trade,  nor  can 

*  Elements  of  Logic. 


38  CHAPTER  I.   §  Y. 

the  monopolist  readily  be  made  to  believe  in  the  advantages  of 
'competition.  The  politician  lives  by  managing  the  affairs  of 
others,  and  he  has  small  desire  to  see  the  people  taught  the  proper 
management  of  their  own  concerns.  All  these  men  profit  by 
teaching  falsehood,  and  therefore  frown  upon  those  who  would 
desire  to  teach  the  truth.  The  landlord  believes  in  one  doctrine  and 
his  tenant  in  another,  while  the  payer  of  wages  looks  at  all  ques 
tions  from  a  point  of  sight  directly  the  opposite  of  the  one  occupied 
by  him  to  whom  the  wages  are  paid. 

We  here  meet  a  difficulty  with  which,  as  has  been  already  said, 
no  other  science  has  had  to  contend.  Astronomy  has  wrought  its 
way  to  its  present  prodigious  height  with  but  temporary  opposition 
from  the  schools,  because  no  one  was  personally  interested  in  con 
tinuing  to  teach  the  revolution  of  the  sun  around  the  earth.  For 
a  time  the  teachers,  secular  and  spiritual,  were  disposed  to  deny 
the  movement  of  the  latter,  but  the  fact  was  proved,  and  opposi 
tion  ceased.  Such,  too,  was  the  case  when  geology  began  to  teach 
that  the  earth  had  had  a  longer  existence  than  previously  had 
been  believed.  The  schools  that  represented  by-gone  days  did 
then  as  they  had  done  in  the  days  of  Copernicus  and  Galileo, 
denouncing  as  heretics  all  who  doubted  the  accuracy  of  the  re 
ceived  chronology,  but  short  as  is  the  time  that  has  since  elapsed, 
the  opposition  has  already  disappeared.  Franklin,  Dalton,  Wol- 
laston,  and  Berzelius  prosecuted  their  inquiries  without  fear  of 
opposition,  for  their  discoveries  were  unlikely  to  affect  injuriously 
the  pockets  of  land-owners,  merchants,  or  politicians.  Social 
science  is,  however,  still  to  a  great  extent  in  the  hands  of  the 
schoolmen,  backed  everywhere  by  those  who  profit  by  the  ignorance 
and  the  weakness  of  the  people. 

The  occupants  of  academic  chairs  in  Austria  or  Russia  may  not 
teach  what  is  unfavorable  to  the  divine  rights  of  kings,  or  favor 
able  to  increase  in  the  powers  of  the  people.  The  doctrines  of 
the  schools  of  France  vary  from  time  to  time  as  despotism  yields 
to  the  people,  or  the  people  yield  to  it.  The  landed  aristocracy 
of  England  was  gratified  when  Mr.  Malthus  satisfied  it  that  the 
poverty  and  misery  of  the  people  resulted  necessarily  from  a  great 
law  emanating  from  an  all-wise  and  all-benevolent  Creator ;  and 
the  manufacturing  one  is  equally  so  when  it  sees,  as  it  thinks,  the 
fact  established  that  the  general  interests  of  the  country  are  to  be 


OF  SCIENCE  AND  ITS  METHODS.  39 

promoted  by  measures  looking  to  the  production  of  an  abundant 
supply  of  cheap,  or  badly  paid,  labor. 

The  system  of  this  country  being  based  upon  the  idea  of  entire 
political  equality,  we  might,  perhaps,  be  warranted  in  looking  to 
our  teachers  for  something  different,  even  if  not  better,  but  if  we 
should  do  so  we  should,  in  general,  be  disappointed.  With  few  and 
slight  exceptions,  our  professors  teach  the  same  social  science  that 
is  taught  abroad  by  men  who  live  by  inculcating  the  divine  rights 
of  kings ;  and  they  teach  self-government  by  aid  of  books  from 
which  their  pupils  learn  that  the  greater  the  tendency  towards 
equality  the  greater  is  the  hatred  among  the  several  classes  of 
which  society  is  composed.  Social  science,  as  taught  in  some  of  ( 
the  colleges  of  this  country  and  of  Europe,  is  now  on  a  level  with 
the  chemical  science  of  the  early  part  of  the  last  century ;  and  there 
it  will  remain  so  long  as  its  teachers  shall  continue  to  look  inwards 
to  their  own  minds  and  invent  theories,  instead  of  looking  out 
wards  to  the  great  laboratory  of  the  world  for  the  collection  of 
facts  with  a  view  to  the  discovery  of  laws.  In  default  of  such  lawsJL_j 
they  are  constantly  repeating  phrases  that  have  110  real  meaning, 
and  that  tend,  as  Goethe  most  truly  says,  to  "  ossify  the  organs  of 
intelligence,"  not  only  of  themselves  but  of  their  hearers.* 

The  state  in  which  it  now  exists  is  what  M.  Cornte  is  accustomed  / 
to  denominate  the  metaphysical  one,  and  there  it  must  continue  to 
remain  until  its  teachers  shall  waken  to  this  fact,  that  there  is  but'' 
one  system  of  laws  for  the   government   of  all  matter,  whether 
existing  in  the  form  of  a  piece  of  coal,  a  tree,  a  horse,  or  a  man — and  j 
but  one  mode  of  study  for  all  departments  of  it.     "  The  leaf,"  says  / 
a  recent  writer,  "is  to  the  plant  what  the  microcosm  is  to  the  macro^ 
cosm — it  is  the  plant  in  miniature — a  common  law  governs  the 
two,  and  therefore  whatever  disposition  we  find  in  the  parts  of  the 

*  "  The  pagan,  the  idolater,  the  ignorant  even  of  the  Catholic  church, 
worship  their  stocks  and  stones ;  and  instead  of  regarding  these  as  signs 
only  shadowing  forth  what  in  its  intellectual  state,  the  human  mind  can 
not  otherwise  express  of  its  religious  sentiments,  takes  the  signs  for  the 
things  they  represent,  and  worships  them  as  facts.  We,  too,  worship  our 
signs — our  words.  Let  any  man  set  himself  to  the  task  of  examining  the 
state  of  his  knowledge  on  the  most  important  subjects,  divine  or  human, 
and  he  will  find  himself  a  mere  word-worshipper ;  he  will  find  words  with 
out  ideas  or  meaning  in  his  mind  venerated,  made  idols  of — idols  different 
from  those  carved  in  wood  or  stone  only  by  being  stamped  with  printer's 
ink  on  white  paper." — Laing,  Chronicle  of  the  Sea  Kings,  Introd.  Disserta 
tion,  chap.  ii. 


40  CHAPTER  I.   §  f . 

leaf,  we  may  expect  to  find  in  the  parts  of  the  plant;  and  vice 
versa."  So  is  it  with  the  tree  of  science,  with  its  many  branches, 
what  is  true  of  its  root  cannot  be  otherwise  than  true  of  the  leaves 
and  the  fruit.  The  laws  of  physical  science  are  equally  those  of 
social  science,  and  in  every  effort  to  discover  the  former  we  are 
but  paving  the  way  for  the  discovery  of  the  latter.  "  The  entire 
succession  of  men,"  said  Pascal,  "through  the  whole  course  of 
ages,  must  be  regarded  as  one  man,  always  living,  and  incessantly 
learning;"  and  among  the  men  who  have  most  largely  contributed 
towards  the  foundation  of  a  true  social  science  are  to  be  ranked 
the  eminent  teachers  to  whose  labors  we  have  been  so  largely 
indebted  for  the  wonderful  development  of  physical,  chemical,  and 
physiological  science  in  the  last  and  present  centuries. 

The  later  man  is,  therefore,  the  one  possessing  the  most  of  that 
knowledge  of  the  operations  of  society  required  for  comprehending 
the  causes  of  the  various  effects  recorded  in  the  pages  of  history, 
and  for  predicting  those  which  must  result  in  future  from  causes 
now  existing.  The  early  man  possessed  little  of  science  but  the 
instrument  required  for  its  acquisition,  and  what  of  it  he  did  acquire 
was  purely  physical  in  its  character  and  most  limited  in  its  extent. 
The  existing  one  is  in  possession  not  only  of  physical  science  to 
an  extent  that  is  wonderful  compared  with  what  existed  a  century 
since,  but  to  this  he  has  added  the  chemical  and  physiological 
sciences  then  scarcely  known,  and  has  proved  that  the  laws  of  the 
former  and  more  abstract  are  equally  those  of  the  latter  more  con 
crete  and  special  ones.  If,  then,  there  is  truth  in  the  suggestion 
of  Pascal  that  we  are  to  consider  the  endless  succession  of  men  as 
one  man,  may  it  not  be  that  the  laws  of  all  the  earlier  and  more 
abstract  departments  of  science  will  be  found  to  be  equally  true  in 
reference  to  the  highly  concrete  and  special  one  which  embraces  the 
relations  of  man  in  society — and  that,  therefore,  all  science  will 
prove  to  be  but  one,  its  parts  differing  as  do  the  colors  of  the 
spectrum,  but  producing,  as  does  the  sun's  ray,  undecomposed, 
one  white  and  bright  light  ?  To  show  that  such  is  the  case  is  the 
object  of  the  present  work. 


OF  MAN. 


•'"":"•'-  *•'•'••• 


CHAPTER    II. 

OF   MAN — THE   SUBJECT   OF   SOCIAL   SCIENCE. 

• 

§  1.  MAN,  the  molecule  of  society,  is  the  subject  of  social  science. 
In  common  with  all  other  animals  he  requires  to  eat,  drink,  and 
sleep,  but  his  greatest  need  is  that  of  ASSOCIATION  with  his  fel 
low-men.  Born  the  weakest  and  most  dependent  of  animals,  he 
requires  the  largest  care  in  infancy,  and  must  be  clothed  by  others, 
whereas  to  birds  and  beasts  clothing  is  supplied  by  nature.  Ca 
pable  of  acquiring  the  highest  degree  of  knowledge,  he  appears  in 
the  world  destitute  even  of  that  instinct  which  teaches  the  bee  and 
the  spider,  the  bird  and  the  beaver,  to  construct  their  habitations^ 
and  to  supply  themselves  with  food.  Dependent  upon  the  expe 
rience  of  himself  and  others  for  all  his  knowledge,  he  requires  lan 
guage  to  enable  him  either  to  record  the  results  of  his  own  observa 
tion,  or  to  profit  by  those  of  others  ;  and  of  language  there  can  be 
none  without  association.  Created  in  the  image  of  his  Maker,  he 
should  participate  in  his  intelligence ;  but  it  is  only  by  means  of 
ideas  that  he  can  avail  himself  of  the  faculties  with  which  he  has 
been  endowed,  and  without  language  there  can  be  no  ideas — no 
power  of  thought.  Without  language,  therefore,  he  must  remain 
in  ignorance  of  the  existence  of  powers  granted  to  him  in  lieu  of 
the  strength  of  the  ox  and  the  horse,  the  speed  of  the  hare,  and 
the  sagacity  of  the  elephant,  and  must  remain  below  the  level  of 
the  brute  creation.  To  have  language  there  must  be  association 
and  combination  of  men  with  their  fellow  men,  and  it  is  on  this 
condition  only  that  man  can  be  man ;  on  this  alone  that  we  can 
conceive  of  the  being  to  which  we  attach  the  idea  of  man.  "  It 
is  not  good,"  said  God,  "  that  man  should  live  alone,"  nor  do  we 
ever  find  him  doing  so;  the  earliest  records  of  the  world  exhibiting 
to  us  beings  living  together  in  society,  and  using  words  for  the 
expression  of  their  ideas.  Whence  came  those  words  ?  Whence 
came  language  ?  With  the  same  propriety  might  we  ask — Why  does 
4 


42  CHAPTER  II.  §  1. 

fire  burn  ?  Why  does  man  see,  feel,  hear,  or  walk  ?  Language 
escapes  from  him  at  the  touch  of  nature  herself,  and  the  power  of 
using  words  is  his  essential  faculty,  enabling  him  to  maintain  com 
merce  with  his  fellow  men,  and  fitting  him  for  that  association  with 
out  which  language  cannot  exist.  The  words  society  and  lan 
guage  convey  to  the  mind  separate  and  distinct  ideas,  and  yet  by 
no  effort  of  the  mind  can  we  conceive  of  the  existence  of  the  one 
without  the  other. 

The  subject  of  social  science  then  is  man — the  being  to  whom 
have  been  given  reason  and  the  faculty  of  individualizing  sounds  so 
as  to  give  expression  to  every  variety  of  idea — and  who  has  been 
placed  in  a  position  to  exercise  that  faculty.  Isolate  him,  and 
with  the  loss  of  the  power  of  speech,  he  loses  the  power  to  rea 
son,  and  with  it  the  distinctive  quality  of  man.  Restore  him  to 
society,  and  with  the  return  of  the  power  of  speech  he  becomes 
again  the  reasoning  man. 

~  We  have  here  the  great  law  of  molecular  gravitation  as  the 
indispensable  condition  of  the  existence  of  the  being  known  as  man. 
The  particles  of  matter  having  each  an  independent  existence,  the 
atom  of  oxygen  or  of  hydrogen  is  as  perfect  and  complete  as  it 
could  be  were  it  in  -connection  with  millions  of  others  like  itself. 
The  grain  of  sand  is  perfect  whether  flying  alone  before  the  wind 
or  resting  with  its  fellows  on  the  shores  of  the  broad  Atlantic. 
The  tree  and  the  shrub,  brought  from  distant  lands  and  standing 
alone  in  the  conservatory,  produce  the  same  fruits  and  yield  the 
same  odors  as  when  they  stood  in  the  groves  from  which  they  had 
been  transplanted.  The  individual  dog,  cat,  and  rabbit  possess  all 
their  powers  in  a  state  of  entire  isolation.  Such,  however,  is  not 
the  case  with  man.  The  wild  man,  wherever  found,  has  always 
proved  to  be  not  only  destitute  of  the  reasoning  faculty,  but  des 
titute  also  of  the  instinct  that  in  other  animals  takes  the  place  of 
— reason — and  therefore  the  most  helpless  of  beings. 

(Man  tends  of  necessity  to  gravitate  towards  his  fellow-man.  Of 
all  animals  he  is  the  most  gregarious,  and  the  greater  the  number 
collected  in  a  given  space  the  greater  is  the  attractive  force  there 
exerted,  as  is  seen  to  have  been  the  case  with  the  great  cities  of 
the  ancient  world,  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  Athens  and  Rome,  and 
as  is  now  seen  in  regard  to  Paris  and  London,  Vienna  and  Naples, 
Philadelphia,  New  York,  and  Boston.  Gravitation  is  here,  as 


OF  MAN.  43 

everywhere  else  in  the  material  world,  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the 
mass,  and  in  the  inverse  one  of  the  distance. 

Such  being  the  ease,  why  is  it  that  all  the  members  of  the 
human  family  do  not  tend  to  come  together  on  a  single  spot  of  ! 
earth  ?  Because  of  the  existence  of  the  same  simple  and  universal 
law  by  means  of  which  is  maintained  the  beautiful  order  of  the 
system  of  which  our  planet  forms  a  part.  We  are  surrounded 
by  bodies  of  various  sizes,  and  some  of  these  are  themselves  pro 
vided  with  satellites,  each  having  its  local  centre  of  attraction,  by 
means  of  which  its  parts  are  held  together.  Were  it  possible  that 
that  attractive  power  could  be  annihilated,  the  rings  of  Saturn,  the 
moons  of  our  earth  and  of  Jupiter,  would  crumble  to  pieces  and 
fall  inward  upon  the  bodies  they  now  attend,  a  mass  of  ruins.  So, 
too,  with  the  planets  themselves.  Small  as  are  the  asteroids,  each 
has  within  itself  a  local  centre  of  attraction  enabling  it  to  preserve 
its  form  and  substance,  despite  the  superior  attraction  of  the  larger 
bodies  by  which  it  is  everywhere  surrounded. 

So  it  is  throughout  our  world.  Look  where  we  may  we  see 
local  centres  of  attraction  towards  which  men  gravitate,  some  exer 
cising  less  influence,  and  others  more.  London  and  Paris  may  be 
regarded  as  the  rival  suns  of  our  system,  each  exercising  a  strong 
attractive  force,  and  were  it  not  for  the  existence  of  the  counter 
attraction  of  local  centres  like  Vienna  and  Berlin,  Florence  and 
Naples,  Madrid  and  Lisbon,  Brussels  and  Amsterdam,  Copenhagen, 
Stockholm,  and  St.  Petersburg,  Europe  would  present  to  view  one 
great  centralized  system,  the  population  of  which  was  always  tend 
ing  towards  those  two  cities,  there  to  make  all  their  exchanges, 
and  thence  to  receive  their  laws.  So,  too,  in  this  country.  It  is 
seen  by  all  how  strong  is  even  now  the  tendency  towards  New 
York,  and  that,  too,  in  despite  of  the  existence  of  local  centres  of 
attraction  in  the  cities  of  Boston,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  Wash 
ington,  Pittsburg,  Cincinnati,  St.  Louis,  New  Orleans,  Augusta, 
Savannah,  and  Charleston,  and  in  the  numerous  capitals  of  the 
States  of  which  the  Union  is  composed.  Were  we  to  obliterate 
these  centres  of  attraction  and  place  a  centralized  government  like 
that  of  England,  France,  or  Russia,  in  the  city  of  New  York, 
not  only  would  it  grow  to  the  size  of  London,  but  soon  would  far 
exceed  it,  and  the  effect  would  be  the  same  as  would  be  produced 
in  the  astronomical  world  by  a  similar  course  of  operation.  The 


44  CHAPTER  II,  §  1. 

local  governments  would  fall  to  pieces,  and  all  the  atoms  of  which 
they  had  been  composed  would  tend  at  once  towards  the  new 
centre  of  gravity  that  had  been  thus  produced.  Local  and  volun 
tary  association  for  the  various  purposes  of  life,  throughout  what 
would  then  be  the  provinces  of  a  great  centralized  State,  would  be 
at  an  end,  but  in  its  place  would  be  found  the  forced  association  of 
dependents  on  one  hand  and  masters  on  the  other.  Every  neigh 
borhood  that  required  to  have  a  road  or  a  bridge,  to  establish  a 
bank,  or  to  obtain  a  redress  of  grievances,  would  be  required  to 
make  its  application  therefor  at  the  great  city,  distant  many  hun 
dreds  of  miles,  and  to  pay  innumerable  officers  before  it  could 
obtain  the  desired  permission,  as  is  now  the  case  in  France.  Every 
community  that  found  itself  suffering  from  heavy  taxes,  or  from  other 
oppressions  from  which  it  desired  to  be  relieved,  would  be  found 
seeking  to  make  itself  heard,  but  its  voice  would  be  drowned  by 
£nose  of  the  men  who  profited  by  such  abuses,  as  is  now  the  case 
with  the  complaints  to  Parliament  of  Ireland  and  of  India.  Instead 
of  going,  as  now,  to  the  little  capital  of  the  State,  close  at  hand, 
and  obtaining  without  cost  the  required  laws,  they  would  find 
themselves  compelled  to  employ  agents  for  the  negotiation  of  their 
business,  and  those  agents  would  then,  as  now  in  England,  accu 
mulate  enormous  fortunes  at  the  cost  of  the  poor  and  distant 
suitors.  Much  of  this  is  already  seen  at  Washington,  and  yet  how 
trivial  is  it  compared  with  what  it  would  be  were  all  the  various 
business  transacted  by  State  Legislatures  and  by  County  Boards 
brought  within  the  sphere  of  Congress,  as  it  now  is  within  thai  of 
the  British  Parliament. 

The  centralizing  tendency  of  the  State  capital  is,  in  its  turn, 
greatly  neutralized  by  the  existence  of  opposing  centres  of  attrac 
tion  at  the  various  county  seats,  and  in  the  numerous  towns  and 
cities  of  the  Union,  each  managing  its  own  affairs,  and  each  pre 
senting  places  at  which  the  people  of  the  various  districts,  and  of 
the  whole  country  itself,  are  brought  into  connection  with  each 
other,  for  the  exchange  of  the  products  of  physical  or  mental 
effort.  Obliterate  these — centralize  the  powers  of  towns  and 
counties  in  the  State  Legislatures — and  the  power  of  local  associa 
tion  throughout  the  States  would  be  in  a  great  degree  annihilated. 
The  State  capital,  or  that  of  the  Union,  would  grow  rapidly,  as 
would  the  sun  were  the  local  attraction  of  the  planets  destroyed. 


OF  MAN.  45 

The  splendor  of  both  might  be  greatly  increased,  but  in  the  space 
now  traversed  by  the  planets  motion  would  cease  to  exist,  as  would 
be  the  case  throughout  this  country,  were  it  made  dependent  on  a 
single  centre — and  without  motion  there  can  be  neither  association 
nor  force,  nor  consequently  progress. 

Further,  with  the  growth  of  centralization  there  would  be  seen 
a  diminution  in  the  counteracting  force  by  which  families  are  held 
together,  despite  the  attractions  of  the  capital.  Whatever  tends 
to  the  establishment  of  decentralization,  and  to  the  production  of 
local  employment  for  time  and  talent,  tends  to  give  value  to  land, 
to  promote  its  division,  and  to  enable  parents  and  children  to 
remain  in  closer  connection  with  each  other — and  the  stronger  the 
ties  that  bind  together  the  members  of  the  various  families  of  which 
the  community  is  composed,  the  more  perfect  will  be  their  revolution 
on  their  own  axes,  and  the  greater  the  attraction  within  the  bosom 
of  the  communities  which  constitute  the' State.  Whatever  tends, 
on  the  contrary,  to  the  diminution  of  local  employment,  tends  to  the 
consolidation  of  land,  the  breaking  up  of  families,  and  the  building 
up  of  great  cities  at  the  expense  of  the  country,  as  we  see  to  have 
been  the  case  in  Italy,  Ireland,  India,  and  Britain,  and  as  is  at  this 
moment  seen  in  the  rapid  growth  of  our  own  cities,  accompanied, 
as  it  always  is,  by  the  expulsion  of  our  people  to  distant  lands, 
with  constant  diminution  of  the  power  of  association  and  combina 
tion. 

The  pages  of  history  furnish  throughout  evidence  that  the 
tendency  towards  association — without  which  the  human  animal 
cannot  become  the  being  to  which  we  apply  the  denomination  of 
man — has  everywhere  grown  with  increase  in  the  number  and 
strength  of  local  centres  of  attraction,  and  has  declined  with  their 
diminution.  Such  centres  were  found  in  nearly  all  the  Grecian 
Islands,  while  Laconia  and  Attica,  Boaotia  and  Argos,  Arcadia 
and  Elis,  Megara  and  Corinth,  were  enabled  each  to  rejoice  in  its 
own.  Local  association  existed  there  to  an  extent  that  had  until 
then  been  unequalled  in  the  world,  yet  the  tendency  towards  general 
association  was  exhibited  in  the  foundation  of  the  Isthmian  and 
Nemean,  and  the  yet  more  celebrated  Olympic  games,  which  drew 
together  all  that  were  distinguished  for  physical  or  intellectual 
power,  not  only  in  the  States  and  cities  of  Greece  itself,  but  in  the 
distant  Italy  and  Asia.  In  the  Amphictyonic  league  we  find 


46  CHAPTER  II.   §  1. 

further  evidence  of  the  tendency  to  general  as  a  consequence  of 
local  association  ;  but  here,  unhappily,  the  idea  was  not  fully  car 
ried  out.  The  attractive  power  of  this  sun  of  the  system  was  not 
sufficient  for  the  maintenance  of  order  in  the  movements  of  the 
planets,  which  frequently,  therefore,  shot  madly  from  their  spheres 
and  jostled  against  each  other. 

To  the  equal  action  of  opposing  forces  it  is  due,  that  the  celes 
tial  world  is  enabled  to  exhibit  such  wonderful  harmony  and  such 
unceasing  motion — and  to  the  same  principle,  here  carried  out  to 
a  greater  extent  than  elsewhere  in  the  world,  it  is  due  that  the 
history  of  the  Union  has  presented  no  case  of  civil  war,  while 
exhibiting  an  amount  of  peaceful  motion  far  exceeding  what  has 
elsewhere  been  exhibited.  Destroy  the  State  governments  and 
centralize  power  in  the  hands  of  the  general  government,  and  the 
result  would  be  found  in  a  steady  diminution  of  the  power  of  vo 
luntary  association  for  the  purposes  of  peace,  and  increase  in  the 
tendency  towards  involuntary  association  for  the  purposes  of  war. 
Destroy  the  central  government,  and  conflicts  among  the  States 
would  become  inevitable.  The  people  of  Greece  had  all  this  yet 
to  learn,  and  the  consequences  were  found  in  frequent  war  among 
the  states  and  cities,  resulting  in  the  establishment  of  a  highly 
centralized  government,  controlling  the  disbursements  of  a  treasury 
filled  by  the  contributions  of  a  thousand  subject  cities.  Thence 
forward,  the  people  of  those  cities  lost  the  power  of  association  for 
the  determination  of  their  respective  rights,  and  had  to  seek  for 
justice  among  themselves  in  the  courts  of  Athens.  To  that  city 
resorted  all  who  had  money  to  pay  to,  or  to  receive  from,  the 
State — all  who  had  causes  to  try — all  who  sought  places  of  power 
or  profit — all  who  found  themselves  unable  to  obtain  a  living  at 
home — and  all  who  preferred  the  work  of  plunder  to  that  of  labor  ; 
and  with  every  step  in  this  direction,  decentralization  gave  way  to 
centralization,  until  at  length  Athens  and  Sparta,  Samos  and  Mi- 
tylene,  and  all  the  other  states  and  cities  of  Greece  were  involved 
in  one  common  ruin — Attica  herself  becoming,  to  a  great  extent, 
the  property  of  a  single  individual,  surrounded  by  hosts  of  slaves, 
the  disposition  for  voluntary  association,  and  the  power  to  exercise 
it,  having  wholly  passed  away. 

Looking  to  Italy,  we  see  a  similar  course  of  things.  In  its  early 
days,  Etruria  and  the  Campagna,  Magna  Gr&cia  and  the  Samnite 


OF  MAN.  47 

Hills,  presented  to  view  numerous  cities,  each  the  centre  of  a  dis 
trict  throughout  which  existed  in  a  high  degree  the  habit  of  local 
and  voluntary  association.  With  time,  however,  we  see  that  habit 
gradually  disappearing,  and  first  among  the  people  of  Rome  itself, 
perpetually  engaged  in  disturbing  their  peaceful  neighbors.  The 
central  city  growing  by  help  of  plunder,  with  every  step  in  that 
direction  the  local  centres  of  attraction  diminished  in  importance, 
and  it  became  more  and  more  necessary  to  resort  to  the  arbitration 
of  Rome  itself.  As  power  became  more  and  more  centralized 
within  her  walls,  her  people  became  more  and  more  dependent  on 
the  public  treasury,  and  the  power  of  voluntary  association  gradu 
ally  disappeared — while  Italy  throughout  presented  the  spectacle 
of  great  landlords  occupying  palaces,  and  surrounded  by  troops  of 
slaves.  So  long  as  the  opposing  forces  were  in  equal  balance, 
Italy  furnished  the  world  with  men,  but  with  her  decline  she  is  seen 
more  and  more  to  have  presented  it  with  slaves,  sometimes  attired 
in  the  beggar's  rags,  and  at  others  in  the  imperial  purple. 

Studying  the  history  of  the  Republic  and  the  Empire,  we  see 
that  their  long  duration  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  fact  that  to  so 
great  an  extent  the  people  of  the  provinces  were  left  to  govern 
themselves,  subject  only  to  the  performance  of  certain  duties  to  the 
central  power.  Local  association  for  almost  every  purpose  was 
for  centuries  left  untouched,  and  the  towns  and  cities  imposed  their 
own  taxes,  determined  their  own  laws,  and  selected  the  magistrates 
by  whom  they  were  to  be  carried  into  effect. 

Modern  Italy,  from  the  days  of  the  Lombards,  presented  during 
many  centuries  the  most  remarkable  case  of  the  connection  between 
local  attraction  and  the  power  of  voluntary  association.  Milan, 
Genoa,  Venice,  Florence,  Rome,  Naples,  Pisa,  Sienna,  Padua,  and 
Yerona,  were  each  centres  of  attraction  such  as  had  existed  once 
in  Greece,  but  in  default  of  a  sun  with  attractive  force  sufficient  to 
maintain  the  harmony  of  the  system,  they  were  perpetually  at  war 
with  each  other,  until  at  length  Austria  and  France  centralized 
within  themselves  the  government  of  the  peninsula,  and  the  habit 
of  voluntary  association  entirely  disappeared. 

India  had  numerous  centres  of  attraction.  In  addition  to  its 
various  capitals,  each  little  village  presented  a  self-governing  com 
munity  in  which  existed  the  power  of  association  to  an  extent 
scarcely  elsewhere  equalled — but  with  the  growth  of  central  power 


48  CHAPTER  II.   §  1. 

in  Calcutta,  the  habit  and  the  power  of  exercising  it  have  almost 
altogether  disappeared. 

Spain  had  numerous  local  centres.  Association  there  existed 
to  a  great  extent,  not  only  among  the  enlightened  Moors,  but 
among  the  people  of  Castile  and  Arragon,  Biscay  and  Leon.  The 
discovery  of  this  continent,  of  which  the  government  became  the 
absentee  landlord,  greatly  increased  the  central  power,  with  cor 
responding  decline  in  local  activity  and  local  association,  and  the 
consequences  are  visible  in  the  depopulation  and  weakness  that 
have  since  ensued. 

In  Germany  we  find  the  home  of  the  decentralization  of  Europe 
— of  jealousy  of  central  power — and  of  the  maintenance  of  local 
rights — as  a  consequence  of  which  the  tendency  towards  associa 
tion  has  always  been  strong  among  her  people,  and  has  now  been 
followed  up  by  the  union  of  her  communities  in  the  Zoll-  Verein, 
one  of  the  most  important  events  recorded  in  the  history  of  Europe. 
Like  Greece,  Germany  has  always  been  deficient  as  regards  the 
sun  around  which  the  numerous  planets  might  peacefully  revolve, 
and  as  in  Greece,  powers  exterior  to  her  system  have  been 
enabled  to  use  one  community  against  another  to  an  extent  that 
has  greatly  retarded  the  progress  of  civilization  at  home,  although 
as  a  rule,  she  has  interfered  little  with  its  progress  abroad.*  Strong 
for  defence,  she  has,  therefore,  been  weak  for  offence,  and  has 
exhibited  no  tendency  towards  wars  for  conquest,  or  towards  the 
levying  of  contributions  upon  her  poorer  neighbors,  as  has  been 
so  much  the  case  with  her  highly  centralized  neighbor,  France. 
Abounding  always  in  local  centres  of  attraction,  it  has  been  found 
impossible  to  create  a  great  central  city  to  direct  the  modes  of 
thought  and  action,  and  to  that  it  is  due  that  Germany  is  now  so 
rapidly  taking  the  position  of  the  great  intellectual  centre,  not  only 
of  Europe,  but  of  the  world  at  large. 

Among  the  states  of  Germany  there  is  none  whose  policy  has  so 
much  tended  to  the  maintenance  of  local  centres  of  action,  as  ad 
vantageous  to  the  best  interests  of  the  people  and  the  state,  as 
Prussia.  All  the  ancient  divisions,  from  the  communes  to  the  pro 
vinces,  have  been  carefully  preserved,  and  their  constitutions  as 

*  Austria  is  a  compound  of  numerous  bodies,  a  large  portion  of  which  is 
entirely  exterior  to  Germany.  Her  wars  in  Italy  have  mostly  been  Aus 
trian  and  not  Germanic. 


OF  MAN.  49 

% 

carefully  respected,  as  a  consequence  of  which  it  is  that  here  we 
find  the  people  advancing  towards  freedom  with  great  rapidity 
while  the  state  is  rapidly  advancing  in  wealth  and  power.  The 
peaceful  effects  of  decentralization  are  here  fully  exhibited  in  the 
fact  that,  under  the  lead  of  Prussia,  Northern  Germany  has  been 
brought  under  a  great  federal  system,  by  help  of  which  internal 
commerce  has  been  placed  on  a  footing  almost  precisely  corre 
sponding  with  that  of  these  United  States. 

Nowhere  in  Europe  had  decentralization  more  existed,  and  no 
where  had  the  tendency  to  peaceful  association,  or  the  strength  of 
resistance  to  attacks  from  without  consequent  upon  union,  been 
more  fully  exhibited  than  in  Switzerland,  notwithstanding  the 
existence  of  the  widest  religious  differences.  The  wars  and  revo 
lutions  of  the  period  ending  in  1815,  and  the  constant  revolutions 
and  growing  centralization  of  France,  have  here,  however,  pro 
duced  their  usual  effect  in  the  establishment  of  increased  centraliza 
tion,  under  which  the  weaker  cantons  have  been  deprived  of  rights 
they  had  for  ages  enjoyed,  and  tyranny  and  oppression  are  gradu 
ally  taking  the  place  of  the  freedom  and  exemption  from  taxation 
that  before  existed. 

The  French  Revolution  annihilated,  when  it  should  have  strength 
ened  the  local  governments — and  thus  was  centralization  increased 
when  it  should  have  been  diminished,  the  consequences  of  which 
are  seen  in  a  perpetual  succession  of  wars  and  revolutions.  Much 
was  done  towards  decentralization  when  the  lands  of  absentee 
nobles  and  of  the  church  were  divided  among  the  people,  and  to 
the  counteracting  effect  of  this  measure  it  is  due  that  France  has 
grown  in  strength  notwithstanding  the  extraordinary  centralization 
of  her  system. 

Belgium  and  Holland  present  remarkable  instances  of  the  power 
of  local  action  to  produce  habits  of  association.  In  both,  the 
towns  and  cities  were  numerous,  and  the  effect  of  combined  action 
is  seen  in  the  wonderful  productiveness  of  what  was  originally  one 
of  the  poorest  countries  of  Europe. 

In  no  part  of  Europe  was  the  division  of  land  so  complete,  or  its 
possession  so  secure,  as  in  Korwcy,  at  and  before  the  date  of  the 
Norman  conquest  of  England;  and  in  none,  consequently,  was  the 
power  of  local  attraction  so  fully  exhibited.  The  habit  of  asso- 


50  CHAPTER  II.   §  1. 

elation,  therefore,  existed  to  an  extent  then  unknown  in  France 
and  Germany,  developing  itself  in  the  establishment  of  "  a  litera 
ture  in  their  own  language,  and  living  in  the  common  tongue  and 
minds  of  the  people."*  Elsewhere,  the  languages  of  the  educated 
and  uneducated  classes  have  differed  so  widely  as  to  render  the 
literature  used  by  the  former  entirely  inaccessible  to  the  latter; 
and,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  there  has  been  "a  want  of  that 
circulation  of  the  same  mind  and  intelligence  through  all  classes 
of  the  social  body,  differing  only  in  degree,  not  in  kind,  in  the 
most  educated  and  most  ignorant,  and  of  that  circulation  and  in 
terchange  of  impressions,  through  a  language  and  literature  com 
mon  to  all,  which  alone  can  animate  a  population  into  a  nation,  "f 
They  were  in  advance  of  other  nations,  too,  in  the  fact  that  em 
ployments  were  diversified,  affording  further  proof  of  the  existence 
of  the  habit  of  association  and  combination.  "Iron,"  continues 
Mr.  Laing,  "is  the  mother  of  all  the  useful  arts;  and  a  people 
who  could  smelt  it  from  the  ore,  and -work  it  into  all  that  is 
required  for  ships  of  considerable  size,  from  a  nail  to  an  anchor, 
could  not  have  been  in  a  state  of  such  utter  barbarism  as  they 
have  been  represented  to  us.  They  had  a  literature  of  their  own, 
and  laws,  institutions,  social  arrangements,  a  spirit  and  character, 
very  analogous  to  the  English,  if  not  the  source  from  which  the 
English  flowed ;  and  were  in  advance  of  all  Christian  nations  in 
one  branch  of  the  useful  arts,  in  which  great  combinations  of 
them  are  required — the  building,  fitting  out,  and  navigating  large 
vessels."! 

The  same  habit  of  local  association  has  ever  since  existed,  accom 
panied  by  a  tendency  to  union  whose  effects  were  fully  exhibited 
in  the  establishment,  forty  years  since,  of  a  system  of  government, 
in  which  the  centralizing  and  decentralizing  forces  are  balanced  to 
an  extent  not  exceeded  in  the  world;  and,  as  a  consequence,  this 
little  people  has  exhibited  a  force  of  resistance  to  centralization, 
sought  to  be  introduced  from  abroad,  to  which  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  a  parallel  in  history.  § 

*  Chronicle  of  the  Sea-Kings  of  Norway.  Introductory  chapter  by  S. 
Laing,  p.  33. 

f  Ibid.,  p.  36.  J  Ibid.,  p.  146. 

§  The  reader  who  may  desire  fully  to  appreciate  the  strength  of  resist 
ance  of  free  governments,  can  scarcely  fail  to  derive  advantage  from  Mr. 


OF  MAN.  51 

The  attraction  of  local  centres,  throughout  the  British  islands, 
formerly  so  great,  has,  for  a  long  time  past,  tended  steadily  to  dimi 
nish — Edinburgh,  once  the  metropolis  of  a  kingdom,  having  become 
a  mere  provincial  city;  and  Dublin,  once  the  seat  of  an  independ 
ent  Parliament,  having  so  much  declined,  that  were  it  not  for  the 
fact,  that  it  is  the  place  at  which  the  representative  of  majesty  holds 
his  occasional  levees,  it  would  scarcely  at  all  be  heard  of.  London 
and  Liverpool,  Manchester  and  Birmingham,  have  grown  rapidly; 
but  with  those  exceptions,  the  population  of  the  United  Kingdom 
was  stationary  in  the  period  from  1841  to  1851.  Everywhere, 
there  is  exhibited  an  increasing  tendency  towards  centralization, 
accompanied  by  diminution  in  the  strength  of  local  attraction, 
increase  of  absenteeism,  and  decline  in  the  power  of  voluntary 
association — the  diminution  of  the  latter  wonderfully  exhibited,  in 
the  few  past  years,  in  the  emigration  from  its  shores.  With  every 
step  in  that  direction,  there  is  witnessed  a  steady  increase  in  the 
necessity  for  involuntary  association,  manifested  by  an  increase  of 
fleets  and  armies,  and  an  increase  in  the  amount  of  contributions 
required  for  their  support. 

The  Northern  States  of  the  Union  present,  as  has  been  already 
shown,  a  combination  of  the  centralizing  and  decentralizing  forces 
to  an  extent  that  has  never  elsewhere  been  equalled;  and  there,  ac 
cordingly,  we  find  existing  in  a  high  degree,  the  tendency  to  local 
action  for  the  creation  of  schools  and  school-houses,  the  making  of 
roads,  and  the  formation  of  associations  for  almost  every  imagin 
able  purpose.  The  system  of  laws  that  maintains  harmony 
throughout  the  Universe  is  here  exactly  imitated — each  State  con 
stituting  a  body  perfect  in  itself,  with  local  attraction  tending 
to  maintain  its  form,  despite  the  gravitating  tendency  towards 
the  centre,  around  which  it,  and  its  sister  States,  are  required  to 
revolve. 

As  a  consequence  of  this  it  is,  that  the  course  of  the  North 
has  been  always  peaceful — there  having  been,  at  no  period,  the 
smallest  manifestation  of  a  desire  for  the  acquisition  of  territory, 
or  for  interference  with  the  rights  of  neighboring  States.  Annex- 

Laing's  account  of  his  residence  in  Norway  during  the  period  of  the  several 
conflicts  between  the  Swedish  arid  Norwegian  governments,  in  the  period 
from  1830  to  1840. 


52  CHAPTER  II.   §  2. 

ation  of  the  British  provinces,  with  their  millions  of  free  inhabit 
ants,  would  add  largely  to  the  northern  strength ;  and  yet,  while 
co-operating  with  the  South  for  the  purchase  of  Florida  and  Lou 
isiana,  and  for  the  acquisition  of  Texas,  the  question  of  incorpo 
rating  Canada  into  the  Union,  can  scarcely  be  regarded  as  having 
ever,  seriously,  been  considered. 

Looking  to  the  Southern  States,  the  reverse  of  the  picture  is 
presented  to  our  view.  Masters,  there,  own  men  who  are  denied 
all  power  of  voluntary  association,  and  may  not  even  sell  their 
own  labor,  or  exchange  its  product  for  that  of  the  labor  of 
others.  This  is  centralization,  and  hence  it  is,  that  we  see  through 
out  the  South,  so  strong  a  tendency  towards  disturbance  of  the 
power  of  association  elsewhere.  All  the  wars  of  the  Union  have 
here  had  their  origin.  War  tends  to  increase  the  number  of  hu 
man  machines  that  carry  muskets,  and  require  for  their  support 
large  contributions,  that  might  be  better  employed  in  the  con 
struction  of  roads  or  mills,  by  help  of  which  association  would  be 
promoted. 

Barbarism  is  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  absence  of  associa 
tion.  Deprived  of  this,  man — losing  his  distinctive  qualities — 
ceases  to  be  the  subject  of  social  science. 

§  2.  The  next  distinctive  quality  of  man  is  INDIVIDUALITY. 
Each  rat  or  robin,  fox  or  wolf,  is  the  type  of  his  species  wherever 
found,  possessing  habits  and  instincts  in  common  with  all  his  race. 
Not  such  is  the  case  with  man,  in  whom  we  find  differences  of 
tastes,  feelings,  and  capacities,  almost  as  numerous  as  those  ob 
served  in  the  human  countenance.  In  order,  however,  that  these 
differences  may  be  developed,  it  is  indispensable  that  he  be  brought 
into  asso2iation  with  his  fellow  man;  and  where  that  has  been 
denied,  the  individuality  can  no  more  be  found,  than  it  would  be, 
were  we  searching  for  it  among  the  foxes,  or  the  wolves.  The  wild 
men  of  Germany,  and  those  of  India,  differ  so  little,  that  in  read 
ing  the  description  of  the  one,  we  might  readily  suppose  we  were 
reading  that  of  the  other.  Passing  from  these,  to  the  lower  forms 
of  association,  such  as  exist  among  savage  tribes,  we  find  a  grow 
ing  tendency  to  the  development  of  the  varieties  of  individual  cha 
racter;  but,  desiring  to  find  their  highest  development,  we  must 


OP  MAN.  53 

seek  it  in  those  places  in  which  there  exists  the  greatest  demand 
for  intellectual  effort — those  in  which  there  is  the  greatest  variety 
of  employment — those  in  which,  therefore,  the  power  of  association 
most  perfectly  exists,  in  towns  and  cities.  That  this  should  be 
the  case,  is  perfectly  in  accordance  with  what  is  everywhere  else 
observed. 

"  The  more  imperfect  a  being  is,"  says  Goethe,  "  the  more  do  its 
individual  parts  resemble  each  other,  and  the  more  do  these  parts 
resemble  the  whole.  The  more  perfect  a  being,  the  more  dissimilar 
are  the  parts.  In  the  former  case,  the  parts  are  more  or  less  a 
repetition  of  the  whole ;  in  the  latter  case  they  are  totally  unlike 
the  whole.  The  more  the  parts  resemble  each  other,  the  less  sub 
ordination  is  there  of  one  to  the  other ;  subordination  of  parts 
indicates  a  high  grade  of  organization."* 

This  is  as  true  of  societies  as  it  is  of  the  plants  and  animals  in 
reference  to  which  it  was  written.  The  more  imperfect  they  are — 
the  less  the  variety  of  employments,  and  the  less,  consequently,  the 
development  of  intellect — the  more  do  the  parts  resemble  each  other, 
as  may  readily  be  seen  by  any  one  who  will  study  man  in  the  purely 
agricultural  countries  of  the  earth.  The  greater  the  variety  of 
employments — the  greater  the  demand  for  intellectual  effort — the 
more  dissimilar  become  the  parts,  and  the  more  perfect  becomes 
the  whole,  as  may  readily  be  seen  on  comparing  any  purely  agri 
cultural  district  with  another  in  which  agriculture,  manufactures, 
and  commerce  are  happily  combined.  Difference  is  essential  to 
association.  The  farmer  does  not  need  to  associate  with  his  brother 
farmer,  but  he  does  need  to  do  so  with  the  carpenter,  the  black 
smith,  and  the  miller.  The  mill  operative  has  little  occasion  to 
exchange  with  his  brother  operative,  but  he  does  require  to  ex 
change  with  the  builder  of  houses,  or  the  seller  of  food ;  and  the 

*  The  same  idea  is  thus  given  in  a  recent  work  of  great  ability :  "  The 
differences  are  the  condition  of  development ;  the  mutual  exchanges,  which 
are  the  consequences  of  these  differences,  waken  and  manifest  life.  The 
greater  the  diversity  of  organs,  the  more  active  and  superior  is  the  life  of 
the  individual.  The  greater  the  variety  of  individualities  and  relations  in 
a  society  of  individuals,  the  greater  also  is  the  sum  of  life,  the  more  uni 
versal  is  the  development  of  life,  the  more  complete,  and  of  a  more  elevated 
order.  But  it  is  necessary,  not  only  that  life  should  unfold  itself  in  all  its 
richness  by  diversity,  but  that  it  exhibits  itself  in  its  utility,  in  its  beauty, 
in  its  goodness,  by  harmony.  Thus  we  recognize  the  proof  of  the  old  pro 
verb,  'Variety  in  unity  is  perfection.'" — Guyot's  Earth  and  Man,  p.  80. 


54  CHAPTER  II.   §  2. 

more  numerous  the  shades  of  difference  in  the  society  of  which  he 
is  a  part,  the  greater  will  be  the  facility  for,  and  the  tendency  to, 
that  combination  of  effort  required  for  developing  the  peculiar 
qualities  of  its  individual  members.  It  is  frequently  remarked  to 
what  an  extraordinary  extent,  when  a  demand  arises,  peculiar 
qualities  are  found  whose  existence  had  before  been  unsuspected. 
Thus,  in  our  own  revolution,  blacksmiths  and  lawyers  proved  them 
selves  distinguished  soldiers,  and  the  French  revolution  brought  to 
light  the  military  abilities  of  thousands  of  men  that  otherwise  might 
have  passed  their  lives  at  the  tail  of  the  plough.  It  is  the  occasion 
that  makes  the  man.  In  every  society  there  exists  a  vast  amount 
of  latent  capacity  waiting  but  the  opportunity  to  show  itself,  and 
thus  it  is  that  in  communities  in  which  there  is  no  diversity  of  em 
ployment,  the  intellectual  power  is  to  so  great  an  extent  wasted, 
producing  no  result.  Life  has  been  defined  as  being  a  "mutual 
exchange  of  relations,"  and  where  difference  does  not  exist,  ex 
changes  cannot  take  place. 

So  is  it  everywhere  throughout  nature.  To  excite  electricity, 
two  metals  are  required  to  be  brought  together ;  but  in  order  that 
they  may  combine,  they  must  first  be  reduced  to  their  original  ele 
ments,  and  this  can  be  done  only  by  help  of  a  third  body  differing 
totally  from  both.  That  done,  what  was  before  dull  and  inert  be 
comes  active  and  full  of  life,  and  capable  at  once  of  entering  into 
new  combinations.  So,  too,  with  the  lump  of  coal.  Break  it  up 
into  pieces,  however  small,  and  scatter  them  in  the  ground,  and 
there  they  will  remain,  still  pieces  of  coal.  Let  them,  however,  be 
decomposed  by  the  agency  of  heat — let  the  several  parts  be  indi 
vidualized — and  at  once  they  become  capable  of  entering  into  new 
combinations,  forming  parts  of  the  trunks,  branches,  leaves,  or 
blossoms  of  trees,  or  of  the  bones,  muscles,  or  brain  of  man.  The 
wheat  yielded  to  the  labors  of  man,  might  remain,  as  we  know  it 
to  have  remained  for  numerous  centuries,  undecomposed  and  inca 
pable  of  entering  into  combination  with  any  other  matter;  but  let 
it  pass  through  the  stomach,  and  at  once  it  is  resolved  into  its 
original  element,  part  of  which  becomes  bones,  blood,  or  fat,  and 
then  again  passes  off  in  the  form  of  perspiration — while  another  is 
ejected  in  the  form  of  excrement,  and  ready  to  enter  instantly  into 
the  composition  of  new  vegetable  forms.  The  power  of  association 


OF  MAN.  55 

thus  exists  everywhere  throughout  the  material  world  in  the  ratio  of 
individualization.  So,  too,  has  it  everywhere  been  with  man — and 
the  development  of  individuality  has,  at  all  times,  and  in  all  coun 
tries,  been  in  the  ratio  of  his  power  to  act  in  obedience  to  that  prime 
law  of  his  nature  which  imposes  upon  him  a  necessity  for  association 
with  his  fellow-men. 

That  power,  as  has  already  been  seen,  has  always  existed  in 
the  ratio  of  the  equal  action  of  the  centralizing  and  decentralizing 
forces,  and  where  that  action  has  most  been  found  we  should  most 
find  individuality,  and  that  such  has  been  the  case  can  readily  be 
shown.  In  no  country  of  the  world  has  it  ever  existed  to  so  great 
an  extent  as  was  the  case  in  Greece  in  the  period  immediately 
anterior  to  the  invasion  of  Xerxes,  and  then  and  there  it  is  that  we 
find  the  highest  development.  To  the  men  produced  in  that  period 
it  is  that  the  age  of  Pericles  owes  its  illustration.  The  destruction 
of  Athens  by  Persian  armies  brought  with  it  the  conversion  of 
citizens  into  soldiers,  with  steady  tendency  to  increase  of  central 
ization  and  decline  of  the  power  of  voluntary  association  and  of 
individuality,  until  the  slave  alone  is  found  cultivating  the  lands  of 
Attica,  the  free  citizens  of  the  earlier  period  having  entirely  dis 
appeared. — So,  likewise,  was  it  in  Italy,  where  the  highest  indi 
viduality  was  found  when  the  Campagna  was  filled  with  cities. 
Following  their  decline  the  great  city  grows,  filled  with  paupers, 
the  capital  of  a  land  cultivated  by  slaves. — So  it  is  now  throughout 
the  p]ast,  where  society  is  divided  into  two  great  parts — the  men 
who  toil  and  slave  on  the  one  side,  and,  on  the  other,  those  who 
live  by  the  labors  of  the  slave.  Between  two  such  masses  there  can 
be  no  association,  and  among  the  members  there  can  be  but  little, 
because  there  is  wanting  among  them  that  difference  of  pursuits 
which  is  required  for  producing  an  exchange  of  relations.  The  chain 
of  society  being  there  deficient  in  the  connecting  links,  there  is  no 
motion  among  the  parts,  and  where  motion  does  not  exist  there 
can  be  no  more  development  of  individuality  of  character  than 
could  be  found  in  the  pebble-stone  before  it  had  been  subjected  to 
the  action  of  the  blowpipe. 

The  numerous  towns  and  cities  of  Italy  of  the  Middle  Ages  were 
remarkable  for  their  motion,  and  for  the  development  of  indi 
viduality.  So,  likewise,  was  it  in  Belgium,  and  in  Spain  prior  to 


56  CHAPTER  n.  §  2- 

the  centralization  which  followed  close  upon  the  expulsion  of  the 
Moors,  and  the  discovery  of  the  gold  and  silver  deposits  of  this 
continent. — Such  was  the  case,  too,  in  each  of  the  kingdoms  now 
composing  the  united  kingdom  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  If 
we  take  Ireland  separately,  we  find  her  at  the  close  of  the  last  cen 
tury  giving  to  the  world  such  men  as  Burke,  Flood,  G rattan, 
Sheridan,  and  Wellington  ;  but  since  then  centralization  has 
greatly  grown,  and  individuality  has  passed  away.  So,  likewise, 
has  it  been  in  Scotland  since  the  union.  A  century  since  that  coun 
try  presented  to  view  a  body  of  men  occupying  positions  as  dis 
tinguished  as  any  that  could  be  found  in  Europe,  but  her  local 
institutions  have  decayed,  and  there  are  now,  as  we  are  told,  "fewer 
individual  thinkers"  in  that  country  than  at  any  period  "  since  the 
early  part  of  the  last  century."*  The  mind  of  the  whole  youth  of 
that  country  is  now,  as  the  same  journal  tells  us,  required  to  be 
"cast  in  the  mould  of  English  universities,"  which  exercise  upon 
it  "an  influence  unfavorable  to  originality  and  power  of  thought." 

In  England  herself,  centralization  has  made  great  progress,  and 
the  consequence  among  her  people  has  been  witnessed  in  the 
steady  increase  of  pauperism,  a  condition  of  things  adverse  to  the 
development  of  individuality.  The  little  landed  proprietors  have 
gradually  disappeared  to  make  way  for  the  farmer  and  his  hired 
laborers,  and  the  great  manufacturer,  surrounded  by  hosts  of  opera 
tives,  of  whose  names  even  he  is  ignorant — and  with  every  step  in 
this  direction  there  is  diminished  power  of  voluntary  association. 
London  grows  to  an  enormous  size,  at  the  cost  of  the  country  at 
large,  and  thus  does  centralization  produce  the  disease  of  over 
population,  to  be  cured  by  a  colonization  tending  at  every  step 
further  to  diminish  the  power  of  association. 

Looking  to  France,  we  may  see  the  steady  decline  of  indivi 
duality  attending  the  growth  of  centralization.  In  the  highly  cen 
tralized  days  of  Louis  XIV.,  almost  the  whole  land  of  the  kingdom 
was  in  the  hands  of  a  few  great  proprietors  and  of  the  dignitaries  of 
the  church — nearly  all  of  whom  were  mere  courtiers  whose  faces  but 
reflected  the  expression  apparent  on  that  of  the  sovereign  they 
were  bound  to  worship.  The  right  to  labor  was  then  held  to  be  a 
privilege  to  be  exercised  at  the  pleasure  of  the  monarch,  and  men 

*  North  British  Review,  Aug.,  1853. 


OF  MAN.  5t 

were  forbidden,  on  pain  of  death,  to  worship  God  according  to 
their  consciences,  or  even  to  leave  the  kingdom. 

Passing  to  this  country,  we  find  in  the  Northern  States  indi 
viduality  developed  to  an  extent  elsewhere  entirely  unknown,  and  for 
the  reason  that  centralization  exists  in  a  very  limited  degree,  while 
decentralization  facilitates  the  rapid  growth  of  the  associative 
power.  All  the  links  of  the  chain  are  here  to  be  found,  and  as 
every  man  feels  that  he  can  rise  if  he  will,  there  is  the  strongest 
inducement  to  strive  for  intellectual  development.  In  the  Southern 
States  power  centralizes  itself  in  the  hands  of  the  few,  and  associa 
tion  among  the  slaves  can  take  place  only  through  the  master,  as 
a  consequence  of  which  there  is  little  individuality. 

It  is  in  variety  there  is  unity,  and  this  is  quite  as  true  of  the 
social  as  it  is  of  the  material  world.  Let  the  reader  watch  the 
movements  of  a  city  and  study  the  facility  with  which  men,  so 
various  in  their  qualities,  combine  their  movements — and  the  num 
ber  required  to  work  in  combination  for  the  production  of  a  penny 
newspaper,  a  ship,  a  house,  or  an  opera — and  then  compare  it  with 
the  difficulty  experienced  throughout  the  country,  and  particularly 
in  the  purely  agricultural  portions  of  it,  of  combining  for  even  the 
most  simple  purposes,  and  he  will  see  that  it  is  difference  that  leads 
to  association.  The  more  perfect  the  organization  of  society — 
the  greater  the  variety  of  demands  for  the  exercise  of  the  physical 
and  intellectual  powers — the  higher  will  be  the  elevation  of  man 
as  a  whole,  and  the  stronger  will  be  the  contrasts  among  men.  _ 

Individuality  thus  grows  with  the  growth  of  the  power  of  asso 
ciation,  and  prepares  the  way  for  further  and  more  perfect  combi- 
nation  of  action. 

The  more  perfectly  the  local  attraction  tends  to  counterbalance 
that  of  the  centre — the  more  society  tends  to  conform  itself  to  the 
laws  we  see  to  govern  our  system  of  worlds — the  more  harmonious 
will  be  the  action  of  all  the  parts,  and  the  greater  will  be  the 
tendency  towards  voluntary  association,  and  to  the  maintenance  of 
peace  abroad  and  at  home. 

§  3.  Next  among  the  qualities  by  which  man  is  distinguished 
from  all  other  animals,  is  that  of  RESPONSIBILITY  before  his  fellow- 
man,  and  before  his  Creator,  for  his  actions. 

The  slave  is  not  a  responsible  being,  for  he  but  obeys  his  master. 
5 


58  CHAPTER  II.   §  3. 

The  soldier  is  not  responsible  for  the  murders  he  commits,  for  he 
is  but  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of  his  superior  officer,  and  he  in 
turn  but  obeys  the  irresponsible  chief  of  the  State.  The  pauper  is 
an  irresponsible  being,  though  often  held  by  man  to  be  responsi 
ble.  Responsibility  grows  with  the  growth  of  individuality,  and 
the  latter  grows,  as  we  have  seen,  with  the  growth  of  the  power  of 
association. 

The  savage  slays  and  robs  his  fellow-men,  and  proudly  exhibits 
their  scalps,  or  the  plunder  he  has  acquired,  as  evidence  of  his 
cunning  or  his  courage.  The  soldier  boasts  of  his  prowess  in  the 
field,  and  gladly  enumerates  the  men  who  have  fallen  by  his  arm, 
and  this  he  does  in  a  community  whose  laws  award  fine  and  im 
prisonment  as  the  punishment  for  even  the  smallest  violation  of 
personal  rights.  The  warlike  nation  prides  itself  upon  the  glory 
acquired  in  the  field,  at  the  cost  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  lives, 
and  decorates  its  galleries  with  pictures  plundered  from  their  right 
ful  owners,  while  generals  and  admirals  live  in  affluence  upon  their 
respective  shares  of  the  spoils  of  war.  With  growing  individu 
ality  men  learn  to  denominate  such  acts  by  their  true  and  only 
legitimate  titles — robbery  and  murder. 

The  savage  is  not  responsible  for  his  children,  nor  is  the  slave, 
who  regards  them  as  only  his  master's  property.  With  every  step 
towards  perfect  individuality — always  the  result  of  increase  in  the 
power  of  voluntary  association — men  learn  more  and  more  to  appre 
ciate  their  severe  responsibility  towards  society  at  large,  and  towards 
their  Creator,  for  the  careful  preparation  of  their  children  for  the 
performance  of  their  duties  to  both.  To  that  feeling,  more  than  to 
any  other,  are  due  the  vigorous  efforts  made  for  acquiring  the 
mastery  over  the  forces  of  nature  by  which  the  associated  man  is 
distinguished  from  the  isolated  one — and  thus  it  is  that  each  of 
the  distinguishing  characteristics  of  man  aids,  and  is  aided  by,  each 
and  every  of  the  others.  The  savage  is  indolent,  and  he  destroys 
his  female  children.  The  farmer  extends  his  cultivation  that  he 
may  provide  more  fully  for  the  moral  and  physical  training  of 
his  sons,  and  so  fit  them  better  than  he  himself  had  been  for  the 
•performance  of  their  duties  to  their  fellow-men.  The  artisan  irn- 
.proves  his  machinery,  that  he  may  call  to  his  aid  the  power  of 
electricity  or  of  steam,  and  every  step  in  this  direction  develops  more 
fully  his  own  peculiar  powers.  He  thus  becomes  more  individual- 


OF  MAN.  59 

ized  with  great  increase  in  the  feeling  of  responsibility  both  for 
himself  and  his  children,  and  in  the  disposition  for  combination  of 
his  efforts  with  those  of  his  fellow-men — whether  for  the  purpose 
of  increasing  the  productiveness  of  their  common  labor,  or  for 
administering  the  affairs  of  the  community  of  which  he  is  a  part. 

Here  again  we  find  the  correspondence  between  the  development 
of  the  essential  qualities  of  man  to  be  in  the  ratio  of  the  equal  ac 
tion  of  the  centralizing  and  decentralizing  forces.  The  Spartans 
permitted  no  responsibility  for  their  children,  and  they  endeavored 
to  prevent  the  growth  of  wealth,  while  surrounding  themselves  with 
slaves,  to  whom  all  individuality  was  denied.  The  helot  had  no 
will  of  his  own.  In  Attica,  on  the  contrary,  although  slaves  were 
numerous,  labor  was  held  in  much  higher  respect,  and  diversity  of 
employment  caused  great  demand  for  intellectual  effort.  There, 
consequently,  the  rights  of  parents  were  respected,  while  those  of 
the  child  were  fully  cared  for  under  the  laws  of  Solon. 

In  the  East,  and  in  Africa,  where  individuality  has  no  existence, 
parents  kill  their  children,  and  children  expose  their  parents  when 
unable  to  support  themselves.  In  the  highly  centralized  France, 
foundling  hospitals  abound,  and  it  is  but  quite  recently  that  any 
effort  has  been  made  to  diffuse  the  blessings  of  education  among 
the  masses  of  the  people.  The  growth  of  centralization  in  the 
United  Kingdom,  has  been  accompanied  by  a  growing  disregard 
for  the  rights  of  children,  and  child-murder  now  occupies  the  place 
that  in  France  is  filled  by  the  foundling  hospital.  No  provision 
exists  for  the  general  education  of  the  people,  and  the  feeling  of 
responsibility  declines  with  the  decline  of  individuality  that  has 
attended  the  consolidation  of  the  land,  and  the  substitution  of  day 
laborers  for  small  proprietors. 

In  decentralized  Germany,  on  the  contrary,  there  is  a  steady  in 
crease  in  the  provision  for  education.  It  is,  however,  in  the  highly 
decentralized  Northern  States  of  the  Union  that  we  see  the  most 
conclusive  evidence  of  a  growing  feeling  of  responsibility  in  this 
regard.  The  system  of  universal  education  commenced  in  Massa 
chusetts  by  her  earlier  settlers  has  made  its  way  gradually  through 
New  England,  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and  all  the  Western 
States,  aided  in  all  these  latter  by  grants  of  land  from  the  general 
government  expressly  devoted  to  this  object.  New  York,  unaided, 
exhibits,  in  her  public  schools  900,000  students,  with  school  libra- 


60  CHAPTER  II.  §  4. 

ries  containing  1,600,000  volumes.  The  public  schools  of  Penn 
sylvania  contain  600,000  students,  while  Wisconsin,  youngest  of 
the  States,  manifests  a  disposition  to  place  herself,  in  this  respect, 
in  advance  of  her  elder  sisters. 

In  no  part  of  the  world  is  the  subject  of  education  studied  with 
so  much  care  as  throughout  the  Northern  States,  whereas  the 
highly  centralized  ones  of  the  South  stand  alone  in  the  fact  that 
all  instruction  of  the  laboring  population  is  by  law  prohibited.  As 
a  natural  consequence  of  this,  schools  of  any  kind  are  few,  and  the 
proportion  of  uninstructed  among  the  white  population  is  extremely 
great. 

Responsibility,  individuality,  and  association  grow  thus  together, 
each  helping  and  helped  by  the  other,  and  everywhere  they  are 
seen  to  grow  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  approach  of  social  govern 
ment  to  the  system  under  which  the  wonderful  harmony  of  the 
heavens  is  maintained. 

§  4.  Lastly,  man  is  distinguished  from  all  other  animals  by  his 
CAPACITY  FOR  PROGRESS.  The  hare,  the  wolf,  the  ox,  and  the 
camel  are  the  same  as  those  that  existed  in  the  days  of  Homer,  or 
in  those  of  the  monarchs  of  Egypt,  who  left  behind  them,  in  the 
pyramids,  evidence  of  the  absence  of  individuality  among  their 
subjects.  Man  alone  records  what  he  has  seen  and  learned,  and 
man  alone  profits  by  the  labors  of  his  predecessors.  To  do  this, 
he  requires  language,  and  that  he  may  have  that  he  must  have 
association. 

That  there  may  be  progress,  their  must  be  motion.  Motion  is 
itself  a  result  of  the  incessant  decomposition  and  recomposition  of 
matter,  and  the  work  of  association  is  but  the  incessant  decomposi 
tion  and  recomposition  of  the  various  forces  of  man.  In  a  heap 
of  penny  newspapers  we  find  portions  of  the  labor  of  thousands  of 
persons,  from  the  miner  of  iron  and  lead  ores  and  of  coal,  and 
the  collector  of  rags,  to  the  makers  of  the  types  and  paper,  the 
engine-makers  and  engineer,  the  compositor,  the  pressman,  the 
writer,  editor,  and  proprietor,  and  finally  to  the  boys  by  whom 
they  are  distributed  ;  and  this  exchange  of  services  goes  on  from 
day  to  day,  without  intermission,  throughout  the  year,  each  con 
tributor  to  the  work  receiving  his  share  of  the  pay,  and  each 
reader  of  the  paper  receiving  his  share  of  the  work. 


OF  MAN.  61 

To  have  motion  there  must  be  heat,  and  the  greater  the  latter 
the  more  rapid  will  be  the  former,  as  is  seen  in  the  rapidity  with 
which,  in  the  tropical  regions,  water  is  decomposed  and  returned 
again  in  the  form  of  rain,  and  in  the  rapid  growth  and  develop 
ment  of  their  vegetable  products.  Vital  heat  is  the  result  of  chemi 
cal  action,  the  fuel  being  food,  and  the  solvent  some  of  those  juices 
which  result  from  its  consumption.  The  more  rapid  the  process 
of  digestion,  the  more  healthful  and  perfect  is  the  motion  of  the 
machine.  Social  heat  results  from  combination,  and  that  the 
latter  may  be  produced  there  must  be  difference.  "Everywhere," 
says  a  writer  already  referred  to,  "a  simple  difference,  be  it  of  mat 
ter,  be  it  of  condition,  be  it  of  position,  excites  a  manifestation  of 
vital  forces,  a  mutual  exchange  of  relations  between  the  bodies, 
each  giving  to  the  other  what  the  other  does  not  possess"* — and 
the  picture  thus  presented  of  the  movements  of  the  inorganic  world 
is  just  as  true  in  reference  to  the  social  one. 

The  more  rapid  the  consumption  of  either  material  or  intellectual 
food,  the  greater  will  be  the  heat  that  must  result,  and  the  more 
rapid  the  increase  of  power  to  replace  the  quantity  consumed. 
That  consumption  may  follow  closely  on  production  there  must  be 
association,  and  that  there  cannot  be  without  variety  in  the  modes 
of  employment.  That  such  is  the  fact  will  be  obvious  to  all  who 
see  how  rapid  is  the  spread  of  ideas  in  those  countries  in  which 
agriculture,  manufactures,  and  commerce  are  combined,  compared 
with  that  observed  in  those  which  are  purely  agricultural — Ireland, 
India,  the  "West  Indies,  Turkey,  Portugal,  Brazil,  and  others. 
Nowhere,  however,  is  the  difference  more  strongly  marked  than  in 
the  Northern  States  of  the  Union  as  compared  with  the  Southern 
ones.  In  the  one  there  is  great  heat  and  corresponding  motion, 
and  the  more  motion  the  greater  is  the  force.  In  the  other  there 
is  little  heat,  but  little  motion,  and  very  little  force. 

Progress  requires  motion.  Motion  comes  with  heat,  and  heat 
results  from  association.  Association  brings  with  it  individuality 
and  responsibility,  and  each  aids  in  the  development  of  the  other 
while  profiting  by  the  help  received  from  them. 

*  Guyot.     Earth  and  Jl/an,  p.  74. 


CHAPTER  H.  §  5. 

§  5.  The  laws  here  given  are  those  which  govern  matter  in  all 
its  forms,  whether  that  of  coal,  clay,  iron,  pebble  stones,  trees, 
oxen,  horses,  or  men.  If  true  of  communities  they  must  be  equally 
so  of  each  and  every  individual  of  which  they  are  composed — as 
are  those  relating  to  the  atmosphere  at  large  in  reference  to  all 
the  atoms  of  which  it  is  composed.  That  they  are  so  will  be  obvi 
ous  to  every  reader  who  reflects  to  how  great  an  extent  he  profits, 
physically  and  intellectually,  by  association  with  his  fellow-men — 
and  that  the  severest  of  all  punishments  is  universally  recognized 
as  being  deprivation  of  the  intercourse  he  is  accustomed  to  obtain 
by  means  of  that  association.  Further  reflection  will  satisfy  him 
that  the  more  perfect  his  individuality — the  greater  his  material  or 
intellectual  wealth — the  more  perfect  is  his  power  to  determine  for 
himself  what  shall  be  the  extent  of  his  association  with  his  neigh 
bor  men.  Again,  he  will  see  that  his  responsibility  for  his  actions 
increases  in  the  ratio  of  the  increase  of  his  power  to  determine  for 
himself  what  shall  be  his  course  in  life — that  if  he  be  poor  and 
perishing  for  want  of  food,  he  cannot  be  held  to  the  same  rigid 
responsibility  that  might  with  propriety  be  exacted  were  he  in 
affluent  circumstances.  Lastly,  he  will  be  satisfied  that  his  power  of 
progress  is  in  the  direct  ratio  of  his  ability  to  combine  his  efforts 
with  those  of  his  fellow-man,  and  that,  materially  and  intellectually, 
the  power  of  production  tends  to  increase  with  every  increase  in  the 
demand  for  either  commodities  or  ideas  resulting  from  the  increased 
ability  of  others  to  furnish  commodities  or  ideas  in  exchange  for 
them. 

Were  the  reader  now  to  ask  himself  to  what  it  was  that  he  had 
been  indebted  for  being  the  man  he  is,  his  answer  would  be  that  it 
had  been  to  his  power  of  association  with  his  fellow-men  of  the 
present,  and  with  those  of  the  past  who  have  left  behind  the  records 
of  their  experience.  Were  he  to  extend  his  inquiry  with  a  view 
to  determine  what  it  was  of  which  he  would  least  desire  to  be  de 
prived,  he  would  find  that  it  was  the  power  of  association.  Next, 
and  only  second  to  that,  he  would  desire  perfect  volition — the 
right  to  determine  when,  how,  and  with  whom  he  would  labor  and 
what  disposition  he  should  make  of  the  product.  Deprived  of 
volition  he  would  feel  himself  an  irresponsible  being.  With  it, 
knowing  that  it  depended  upon  himself  what  should  be  his  future,  he 
would  feel  responsible  for  the  proper  use  of  the  advantages  that  he 


OF  MAN.  63 

possessed — and  would  have  every  inducement  so  to  strengthen  his 
faculties  as  to  qualify  himself  for  rising  in  the  world  himself,  and 
for  providing  for  his  wife  and  children — and  every  step  in  this 

direction  would  be  but  the  preparation  for  further  progress,    s ^ 

Social  science  treats  of  man  in  his  efforts  for  the  maintenance, 
and  improvement  of  his  condition,  and  may  now  be  defined  to  be 
the  science  of  the  laws  which  govern  man  in  his  efforts  to  secure  for 
himself  the  highest  individuality,  and  the  greatest  power  of  associa 
tion  with  his  fellow -men. 


64  CHAPTER  III.  S  1. 


CHAPTER    III. 

OF  INCREASE   IN   THE   NUMBERS   OF   MANKIND. 

§  1.  THAT  the  power  of  association  may  increase,  and  that 
there  may  be  increased  motion  among  men,  accompanied  by  an  in 
crease  of  ability  to  command  the  forces  of  nature,  there  must  be 
increase  in  the  numbers  occupying  a  given  space — or  in  other 
words,  population  must  increase  in  density.  That  it  has  done  so, 
is  shown  in  the  fact  that  the  population  of  France  has  doubled 
since  the  commencement  of  the  last  century — that  that  of  Great 
Britain  has  doubled  in  the  present  one — and  that  New  York  and 
Massachusetts,  which  sixty  years  since  had  but  700,000  inhabitants, 
now  contain  more  than  four  millions. 

The  quantity  of  matter  has  not,  however,  grown,  nor  is  it  sus 
ceptible  of  increase.  Man  can  make  no  addition  to  it,  his  power 
over  it  being  limited  to  effecting  changes  of  place  and  of  form. 
Such  being  the  case,  it  is  evident  that  a  portion  of  that  which  had 
previously  existed,  has  taken  upon  itself  -new  and  higher  forms, 
passing  from  the  simple  ones  of  granite,  shale,  clay,  or  sand,  to  the 
complex  and  heterogeneous  ones  exhibited  in  the  bones,  muscles, 
aud  brains  of  men. 

With  this  increase  in  the  number  of  persons  requiring  to  be  fed, 
there  has  been  required  a  corresponding  one  in  the  quantity  of 
animal  and  vegetable  food — and,  that  it  might  be  furnished,  it  has 
been  necessary  that  other  portions  of  the  rocks,  or  of  the  clays  and 
sands  resulting  from  their  decomposition,  should  take  upon  them 
selves  the  forms  of  wheat  and  rye,  of  oats  and  grass,  while  others 
still  have  passed  into  the  forms  of  sheep  and  calves,  hogs  and  oxen. 
That  this  change  must  have  taken  place  is  obvious  from  the  fact 
that  large  as  has  been  the  increase  in  the  number  to  be  fed,  the 
facility  of  obtaining  food  is  greater  now  than  at  any  former  period. 
What,  however,  we  may  now  inquire,  has  been  the  agency  of  man 
in  bringing  about  these  results  ? 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  65 

"  The  phenomena  of  the  visible  universe  are  resolvable  into 
Matter  and  Motion.  These  in  conjunction  make  Force  ;  and 
Matter  itself  has  been  regarded,  in  a  metaphysical  analysis,  as  the 
result  and  the  evidence  of  an  equilibrium  of  forces.  They  are  in 
perpetual  flux  and  circulation.  Man  can  neither  create  nor  destroy 
a  particle  of  matter,  nor  can  he  affect  the  quantity  of  force  in  the 
world.  His  power  is  limited  to  altering  the  mode  of  its  manifes 
tation,  its  direction  and  distribution.  It  is  latent  in  matter,  and 
he  can  set  it  free  by  destroying  the  equilibrium  of  other  forces  that 
hold  it  bound  in  quiescence.  He  may  do  this  by  giving  the  appro 
priate  direction  to  some  independent  force  existing  in  the  store 
house  of  Nature,  which,  after  accomplishing  its  mission,  enters 
into  a  new  equilibrium  with  one  or  more  of  the  liberated  forces,  to 
remain  at  rest  until  again  evoked  for  fresh  labor.  Every  develop 
ment  of  force,  however,  involves  a  consumption  of  matter — not  its 
destruction,  but  its  change  of  form.  To  generate  in  the  battery  a 
given  amount  of  light  or  heat,  to  produce  a  certain  amount  of 
electro-magnetic  motion,  for  the  purpose  of  transmitting  a  message 
upon  the  telegraph  wires  from  New  York  to  Buffalo,  a  certain 
quantity  of  zinc  must  be  burned  by  an  acid  and  converted  into  an 
oxide.  To  propel  a  steamboat  a  hundred  miles,  a  given  quantity 
of  coal  must  be  decomposed  into  gas  and  cinders,  and  a  given 
quantity  of  water  turned  into  steam.  To  effect  a  muscular  action 
of  the  human  body,  the  brain — the  galvanic  battery  of  man's  frame 
— must  send  its  message  along  the  animal  telegraph  wires,  the 
nerves,  and  in  doing  so  part  with  a  portion  of  its  own  substance  ; 
and  the  muscle,  in  obeying  the  command,  undergoes  a  change  by 
which  a  portion  of  its  substance  loses  its  vital  properties  and  sepa 
rates  from  the  living  part,  uniting  with  oxygen  and  being  trans 
formed  into  unorganized  matter,  to  be  thrown  out  of  the  system. 
The  gymnoti,  or  electrical  eels  of  South  America,  by  being  stimu 
lated  to  give  repeated  shocks,  become  exhausted,  so  that  they  may 
be  safely  handled.  Long  repose  and  abundant  food  are  required  to 
replace  the  galvanic  force  which  they  have  exhausted.  It  is  no 
otherwise,  except  in  degree,  with  man. 

"  The  electro-magnetic  telegraph  has  made  the  action  of  its 
battery  familiar  to  most  of  eur  readers.  A  number  of  plates  of 
zinc  and  copper  are  arranged  alternately  in  a  vessel  containing  an 
acid.  When  the  extremities  of  the  apparatus  are  joined  by  means 


66  CHAPTER  III.   §  1. 

of  a  wire,  however  long,  a  chemical  action  begins  upon  the  surface 
of  the  zinc,  and  a  force  is  propagated  along  the  wire,  by  which  we 
can  raise  weights,  set  wheels  in  motion,  and  decompose  compounds 
the  elements  of  which  have  the  strongest  affinity  for  each  other. 
The  moment  the  continuity  of  the  wire  is  interrupted  and  the  cir 
cuit  broken,  the  force  disappears,  and  the  action  between  the  acid 
and  the  zinc  immediately  stops.  When  the  communication  is 
restored,  the  action  of  the  acid  upon  the  zinc  is  renewed,  and  the 
force  which  had  vanished  reappears  with  all  its  original  energy. 
The  substance  of  the  wire,  however,  is  merely  the  conductor  of 
force,  and  does  not  contribute  the  slightest  share  to  its  manifesta 
tions.  Something  analogous  to  this  is  the  office  of  man  in  regard 
to  matter  and  the  forces  of  nature.  He  serves  merely  to  give  them 
circulation,  without  adding  to  or  detracting  from  their  quantity. 
His  person  is  but  a  scene  in  the  theatre  of  their  action,  in  which 
they  have  their  exits  and  their  entrances,  and  each  one  in  his  time 
plays  many  parts,  sustaining  transmutations  of  force,  and  causing 
them  ;  but  they  are  immortal  in  their  essence,  and  run  in  an  end 
less  vicissitude  through  a  round  of  various  utilities,  for  the  main 
tenance  of  life,  and  the  means  of  life."* 

We  have  here  perpetual  circulation,  and  the  more  rapid  the  mo 
tion  the  greater  is  the  force  produced.  That  circulation  has 
endured  from  all  time,  but  with  every  step  in  the  progress  of  the 
earth  towards  its  present  condition,  there  has  been  seen  an  increase 
of  the  machinery  of  decomposition  and  recomposition,  with  steadily 
increasing  tendency  towards  the  development  of  those  forces  always 
latent  in  matter,  and  waiting  until  man  shall  come  to  set  them  free. 
Geologists  inform  us  that  in  the  Silurian  period,  the  present  conti 
nent  of  Europe  was  represented  by  little  more  than  a  few  islands, 
marking  the  places  now  occupied  by  England,  Ireland,  France, 
and  Italy.  Russia  and  Sweden  were  then  somewhat  more  defined, 
but  neither  Spain  nor  Turkey  yet  existed,  and  what  there  was  of 
vegetable  or  animal  life  was  uniform  of  character,  and  lowest  in 
development.  Later,  we  reach  the  period  of  the  coal  formation, 
when  vegetable  life  abounded,  but  still  of  the  most  monotonous 
character.  The  English  coal  measures,  and  those  of  Belgium  and 
of  this  country,  presented  then  everywhere  the  same  description  of 

*  Manual  of  Political  Economy,  by  E.  Pesliine  Smith,  p.  24. 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  6f 

plants,  all  exhibiting  a  total  absence  of  true  flowers,  always  the 
characteristic  of  a  state  of  low  development. 

What  now,  we  may  inquire,  was  the  object  of  all  this  vegetation  ? 
To  produce  decomposition,  and  thus  set  free  the  latent  forces  of 
matter.  "  It  is  in  the  stomach  of  plants,"  says  Goethe,  "  that 
development  begins."  Without  that  stomach — without  that  pro 
cess  of  digestion — the  process  of  change  from  the  angular  forms  of 
the  inorganic  world  to  the  oval  and  beautiful  ones  of  the  highly 
developed  organism  could  never  have  even  been  begun,  nor  could 
the  earth  have  ever  become  the  residence  of  man,  who  requires  for 
his  support  both  animal  and  vegetable  food.* 

"  The  animals  he  consumes  are,"  to  quote  again  from  the  same 
writer,  "  themselves  nourished  by  vegetable  aliment.  The  vegeta 
bles,  in  their  turn,  digest  the  inorganic  elements  supplied  by  the 
soil  and  the  air.  Modern  chemistry  has  proved  that  the  ultimate 
constituents  of  all  are  carbon,  oxygen,  nitrogen,  and  hydrogen, 
the  four  principal  elements  of  the  organic  creation,  and  sulphur, 
phosphorus,  chlorine,  lime,  potassium,  sodium,  iron,  and  a  few 
other  inorganic  substances.  These  must  be  introduced  into  the 
vegetable  or  animal  body,  in  order  that  it  may  live  and  grow. 
From  these  few  elements,  combined  in  different  numbers  and  pro 
portions,  are  formed  air  and  water,  the  rocks  and  the  earths,  which 
are  the  result  of  their  decomposition. 

"  That  the  elements  incorporated  into  the  frame  of  vegetables 
and  animals,  are  derived  from  air,  water,  earth,  and  rock,  has  been 
demonstrated  by  repeated  experiments,  exhibiting  the  fact  that  the 
precise  quantities  of  the  identical  elements  gained  by  the  former 
had  disappeared  from  the  latter,  under  circumstances  artificially 
arranged  so  as  to  exclude  the  possibility  of  their  being  drawn  from 
other  contributories  than  those  whose  loss  was  to  be  examined. 
For  detailed  accounts  of  the  experiments  and  reasoning  by  which 
these  conclusions  are  demonstrated,  we  refer  the  student  to  the 
works  of  Liebig,  and  other  writers  on  organic  chemistry,  who  have 
pursued  the  path  of  inquiry  which  he  opened  and  so  successfully 
wrought. 

*  "  In  every  given  moment  is  the  plant  the  ruin  of  the  past,  and  yet  at 
the  same  time  the  potentially  and  actually  developing  germ  of  the  future  ; 
still  more,  it  also  appears  a  perfect,  complete,  and  finished  product  for  the 
present."— Schloiden.  The  Plant,  p.  90. 


68  CHAPTER  III.  §  1. 

"  The  fundamental  property  of  vitality,  common  to  all  organized 
bodies,  consists  in  their  constant  material  renovation ;  an  attribute 
which  distinguishes  them  from  the  inert  or  unorganized  bodies, 
whose  composition  is  always  fixed.  The  latter  may  be  artificially 
constructed  by  putting  together  their  constituent  parts  ;  while  no 
chemical  skill  is  adequate  to  the  production  of  wood,  sugar,  starch, 
fat,  gelatine,  flesh,  &c.,  whose  elements,  though  equally  simple  and 
equally  well  known,  refuse  to  combine  in  organized  compounds, 
otherwise  than  under  the  operations  of  that  mysterious  power  which 
we  call  vital  force.  The  growth  of  a  crystal — the  highest  inor 
ganic  process  we  are  acquainted  with,  involving  but  one  action, 
that  of  accretion — may  be  conducted  artificially  by  the  chemist ; 
while  the  growth  of  a  simple  cell,  such  as  compose  the  yeast  fungus, 
and  the  minute  algcs  which  color  the  waters  of  stagnant  pools, 
though  the  lowest  organic  process,  involves  the  double  action  of 
accretion  and  disintegration,  and  defies  the  power  of  science  to 
produce.  The  meanest  and  least  complex  form  of  life  it  is  beyond 
man's  reach  to  fashion. 

"  While  the  ultimate  elements  of  vitality  are  profusely  furnished 
in  the  natural  world,  vegetables  alone  have  sufficient  assimilative 
power  to  compose  their  tissues  directly  from  inorganic  matter,  the 
liquid  and  gaseous  materials,  and  the  earthy  particles,  which  are 
minerals  decomposed.  Not  only  so,  but  no  part  of  an  organized 
being  can  serve  as  food  to  vegetables,  until,  by  the  process  of 
putrefaction  and  decay,  it  has  assumed  the  form  of  inorganic  mat 
ter.  It  is  this  capacity  which  renders  vegetable  organization 
the  essential  base  of  all  other.  In  the  absence  of  vegetation  all 
animals  must  be  carnivorous,  and  subsist  by  mutual  destruction, 
which  would  soon  exterminate  their  species.  For  this  reason  it 
must  necessarily  precede  animal  life.  That  such  has  been  the  fact 
is  abundantly  proved  by  geological  research,  which,  reading  the 
history  of  buried  ages  in  the  rocks,  shows  us  that  a  period  of  long 
duration  intervened,  after  the  growth  of  lichens  and  ferns  in  the 
primitive  world,  before  the  lowest  order  of  animals  made  its  appear 
ance  on  the  earth. 

"  Animal  organism,  on  the  contrary,  requires  for  its  support  and 
development  highly  organized  atoms.  The  food  of  animals,  in  all 
circumstances,  consists  of  parts  of  organisms.  While  some  of  them 
feed  directly  upon  vegetation,  others,  requiring  that  matter  should 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  69 

have  taken  on  a  higher  order  of  life  before  it  can  support  their 
own,  prey  upon  other  and  inferior  animals.  Having  a  lower 
assimilative  capacity,  it  is  necessary  that  their  food  should  have 
been  brought  by  intermediate  agents,  into  combinations  agreeing 
more  nearly  with  those  of  their  own  tissues  than  even  vegetable 
organization.  Without  some  arrangement  and  gradation  of  this 
character,  the  higher  natures  must  either  perish  for  lack  of  food,  or 
consume  all  their  activity  in  chemical  transformations,  without 
reserving  any  for  locomotion  or  other  muscular  eifort.  We  may 
remark  here,  that  with  this  necessity  of  overcoming  and  capturing 
prey,  arises  a  degree  of  mental  power,  enabling  the  carnivorous 
animals  to  devise  plans,  and  to  compass  by  association  with  their  fel 
lows,  ends  beyond  their  unassisted  power.  The  spider  spins  an  art 
ful  web  to  catch  flies,  and  wolves  hunt  their  game  in  packs.  The 
superior  functions  are  everywhere  united  with  less  energy  in  the 
inferior.  Those  beings  in  whom  the  latter  prevail  are  self-sufficing 
and  independent,  but  have  little  reach  and  power  beyond  the  satis 
faction  of  the  low  primary  wants.  As  we  rise  in  the  scale  up  to  man, 
the  crown  and  roof  of  things,  we  find  him,  of  all,  the  most  depend 
ent,  the  most  'prone  to  association,  for  which,  by  the  faculty  of 
speech,  he  is  most  adapted ;  and  by  means  of  association,  though 
alone  the  least  self-sufficing  of  all  beings,  he  wins  the  dominion 
over  nature  and  her  forces,  whether  animate  or  inanimate. 

"Another  distinction  between  animal  and  vegetable  life  is  this  : 
The  growth  and  development  of  vegetables  depend  upon  the 
elimination  of  oxygen  from  the  other  component  parts  of  their 
nourishment.  They  are  perpetually  exhaling  this  gas  from  the 
surfaces  of  their  leaves  into  the  air.  The  life  of  animals  exhibits 
itself  in  the  continual  absorption  of  the  oxygen  of  the  air,  and  its 
combination  with  certain  component  parts  of  the  body.  Its  office 
is  to  generate  animal  heat  by  burning  the  combustible  substances 
of  the  frame.  It  combines  with  the  carbon  of  the  food,  and  in  so 
doing  precisely  the  same  quantity  of  heat  is  disengaged  as  if  it  had 
been  directly  burned  in  the  air.  The  result  is  carbonic  acid  gas, 
which  is  thrown  out  of  the  lungs  and  the  skin  ;  this  is  absorbed  by 
the  leaves  of  plants,  the  carbon  separated  and  incorporated  into 
their  substance,  and  the  oxygen  again  exhaled  into  the  atmosphere, 
to  resume  its  round  of  circulation. 

"  To  trace  the  cycle  a  little  further — the  carbon  uniting  with 


70  CHAPTER  III.  §  1 

water  in  the  plant,  forms,  among  other  things,  starch,  which  the 
sap  conveys  to  the  part  requiring  it.  It  is  found  largely  in  the 
seeds.  Starch  exists  in  wheat  to  the  extent  of  one-half  the  weight 
of  the  grain,  and  it  consists  of  carbon  and  water  only.  Man  eats 
the  wheat,  but  we  find  no  starch  in  the  human  body.  When  it 
enters  our  frames  it  undergoes  a  chemical  change,  a  slow  burning, 
in  fact,  in  which  the  carbon  of  the  starch  combines  with  oxygen, 
forming  carbonic  acid  gas,  which,  together  with  the  liberated  water 
in  the  shape  of  vapor,  is  thrown  out  of  the  human  system  into  the 
atmosphere,  to  be  again  converted  in  the  laboratory  of  the  plant 
into  the  starch  from  which  they  were  derived.  Having  served  our 
purpose  in  keeping  up  the  internal  warmth  upon  which  animal  life 
depends,  the  disengaged  elements  are  recomposed  by  the  plants 
into  part  of  their  substance,  which  when  completed  again  serve  as 
fuel  in  the  animal  economy. 

"  The  instances  we  have  given,  will,  so  far  as  relates  to  their 
organic  constituents,  suffice  to  exemplify  the  law  that  animals  and 
vegetables  are  mutually  convertible  one  into  the  other,  and  depend 
on  each  other  for  existence.  The  interchange  of  their  elements  is 
accomplished  through  the  medium  of  the  atmosphere  from  which 
plants  derive  far  the  greatest  portion  of  their  nutriment.  It  is 
found  by  burning  any  form  of  vegetable  matter,  in  a  dry  state,  that 
the  organic  part,  which  is  combustible  and  disappears  in  the  air, 
is  by  far  the  largest.  It  ordinarily  constitutes  from  ninety  to 
ninety-seven  pounds  in  every  hundred.  This  part  of  the  plant  can 
only  have  been  formed  from  air  at  first,  if  not  directly,  yet  from 
compounds  whose  elements  were  themselves  derived  from  air,  exist 
ing  in  the  soil,  and  taken  up  by  the  roots.  In  the  language  of 
Professor  Draper,  in  his  Chemistry  of  Plants,  '  Atmospheric  air  is 
the  grand  receptacle  from  which  all  things  spring  and  to  which 
they  all  return.  It  is  the  cradle  of  vegetable,  and  the  coffin  of 
animal  life.' 

"  About  one  pound  in  ten,  upon  an  average,  of  the  dry  weight 
of  cultivated  plants,  including  their  roots,  stems,  leaves  and  seeds, 
is  formed  of  matter  which  existed  as  a  part  of  the  solid  substance 
of  the  soil  in  which  the  plant  grew.  Every  organ  in  the  stalk, 
stems,  and  leaves  of  the  plant  has  a  reticulated  framework  of  in 
organic  matter,  the  base  of  which  is  either  silex  or  lime.  Silex, 
familiar  to  us  in  the  various  shapes  of  white  sand,  flint,  and  crystal 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  1 

of  quartz,  constitutes  more  than  sixty  per  cent,  in  quantity  of  the 
soil,  sometimes  forming  as  much  as  ninety-five  per  cent.*  It 
gives  porosity  to  the  soil,  in  order  that  water  and  air  may  be 
admitted  into  its  texture.  Alumina,  the  base  of  clay,  on  the  con 
trary,  renders  it  compact  and  retentive.  The  office  of  silex  in 
plants  is  to  give  strength — to  the  straw  of  wheat  for  example  ;  it 
serves  as  the  bone  of  all  the  grass  family.  From  ninety-three  to 
one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  of  soluble  flint  are  required  to  form 
an  acre  of  wheat,  "f 

§  2.  Development  thus  beginning  in  the  stomach  of  vegetables 
is  continued  in  that  of  animals,  until  the  earth  is,  by  degrees,  pre 
pared  to  serve  the  purpose  of  man — and  with  his  coming  we  find 
the  important  difference  that  whereas  all  other  animals  were  bound 
to  continue  forever  the  slaves  of  nature,  he  alone  was  gifted  with 
the  faculties  required  for  enabling  him  to  become  her  master,  and 
to  make  her  do  his  work. 

Casting  our  eyes  at  the  present  moment  over  the  earth,  we  see 
the  same  forces  everywhere  in  action,  producing  new  combinations 
for  the  support  of  vegetable  life,  as  a  preparation  of  land  as  a  resi 
dence  at  first  of  the  lower  animals,  but  ultimately  for  that  of  man. 
The  amount  of  heat  by  which  the  sea  water  is  raised  in  the  form  of 
vapor  is  estimated  as  being  equal  to  the  power  of  16  billions  of 
horses.  Condensed  again,  that  vapor  reassumes  the  form  of  water, 

*  "Two  hundred  pounds  weight  of  earth  was  dried  in  an  oven,  and  after 
wards  put  into  an  earthen  vessel.  The  earth  was  then  moistened  with 
rain  water,  and  a  willow-tree,  weighing  five  pounds,  was  placed  therein. 
During  the  space  of  five  years  the  earth  -was  carefully  watered  with  rain 
water,  or  pure  water ;  the  willow  grew  and  nourished,  and  to  prevent  the 
earth  being  mixed  with  fresh  earth  or  dust  blown  to  it  by  the  winds,  it  was 
covered  with  a  metal  plate  perforated  with  a  great  number  of  small  holes 
suitable  for  the  free  admission  of  air  only.  After  growing  in  the  air  for 
five  years,  the  tree  was  removed  and  found  to  weigh  169  pounds  and  about 
three  ounces  ;  the  leaves  which  fell  from  the  tree  every  autumn  not  being 
included  in  this  weight.  The  earth  was  then  removed  from  the  vessel, 
again  dried  in  the  oven  and  afterwards  weighed  when  it  was  discovered 
to  have  lost  only  about  two  ounces  of  its  original  weight :  thus  164  pounds 
of  woody  fibre,  bark  and  roots,  were  certainly  produced,  but  from  wrhat 
source  ?  The  air  has  been  discovered  to  be  the  source  of  solid  element  at 
last.  This  statement  may  at  first  appear  incredible,  but  on  slight  reflec 
tion  its  truth  is  proved,  because  the  atmosphere  contains  carbonic  acid, 
which  is  the  compound  of  714  parts  by  weight,  of  oxygen,  and  338  parts  by 
weight,  of  carbon." 

f  Smith.     Manual  of  Political  Economy,  p.  25. 


Y2  CHAPTER  III.  §  2. 

which  descending  in  rain,  has  again  to  seek  the  ocean,  and  in 
its  passage  carries  with  it  large  quantities  of  soil,  resulting  from 
the  decomposition  of  the  rocks  of  which  the  earth  is  formed — 
and  that  decomposition  is  in  its  turn  a  consequence  of  the  ever- 
varying  temperatures,  themselves  consequences  of  motion  among 
the  particles  of  which  the  water  and  the  air  are  composed.  "  The 
frost,"  says  Dr.  Clarke,  "is  God's  plow  which  he  drives  through 
every  inch  of  the  ground,  opening  each  clod,  and  pulverizing  the 
whole,"  and  fitting  all  the  parts  for  readily  entering  into  new 
combinations. 

The  particles  of  earth  thus  yielded  are,  by  means  of  the  moving 
waters,  brought  into  close  connection  with  each  other,  and  here 
again  we  find  difference  leading  to  combination  and  producing 
motion.  The  greater  the  variety  of  the  particles,  the  greater  will 
be  the  ability  of  the  compound  to  yield  support  to  vegetable  life, 
as  is  seen  to  be  the  case  in  the  deltas  of  the  Mississippi,  the  Ama 
zon,  and  the  Ganges,  all  furnishing  trees  of  gigantic  size,  sur 
rounded  by  shrubs  of  every  description,  growing  in  the  rankest 
luxuriance.  Here  we  find  the  lower  forms  of  animal  life,  but  the 
impurity  of  the  air  forbids  that  they  should,  during  a  long  period 
of  time,  become  the  residence  of  man,  or  even  of  the  higher  order 
of  brute  animals. 

Yast  quantities  of  this  earth  pass  into  the  ocean,  and  here  it  is 
taken  up  and  passed  through  the  stomach  of  myriads  of  animated 
beings,  of  which  the  ocean  is  the  residence.  The  recent  deep  sea 
soundings  of  the  Atlantic  have  brought  to  light  the  fact  that  no 
earth  is  found  to  attach  itself  to  the  lead,  while  hosts  of  microsco 
pic  animals  are  brought  by  it  from  the  bottom  of  the  great  deep. 

"  Within  its  bosom,"  says  a  recent  writer,  "tiny  insects  are  at 
work,  upon  which  nature  has  imposed,  in  addition  to  the  quest  for 
food  and  the  care  for  their  offspring,  the  perpetual  labor  of  building 
new  houses.  For  defence  as  well  as  for  shelter,  the  shell-fish  toils 
continually,  repairing,  enlarging,  and  renewing  his  own  dwelling- 
place  ;  and  dying  at  last,  he  leaves  it  as  a  contribution  to  the 
growing  thickness  of  shelly  limestone.  For  thousands  of  miles,  in 
more  southern  seas,  still  humbler  insects  erect  their  massive  coral 
walls,  which,  rnow  skirting  long  coastlines,  and  now  encircling 
solitary  islands,  bid  defiance  to  the  angriest  waters ;  and,  as  they 
die,  generation  after  generation,  they  leave,  in  rocky  beds  of  coral- 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  73 

line  limestone,  an  imperishable  memorial  of  their  exhaustless 
labors.  These  rocks  contain,  chained  down  in  a  seemingly  ever 
lasting  imprisonment,  two-fifths  of  their  weight  of  carbonic  acid. 
This  has  been  derived  either  directly  or  indirectly  from  the  atmo 
sphere,  and  thus  the  sea  must  ever  be  drinking  in  carbonic  acid 
from  the  air.  The  labors  of  marine  animals,  therefore,  like  the 
burying  of  vegetable  matter,  should  cause  a  yearly  diminution  of 
the  absolute  quantity  of  this  gas  contained  in  the  atmosphere, 
were  no  other  natural  operation  to  compensate  for  the  constant 
removal. 

"  But  the  earth  herself  breathes  for  this  purpose.  From  cracks 
and  fissures,  in  the  crust,  which  occur  in  vast  numbers  over  the 
surface  of  the  earth,  carbonic  acid  gas  issues  in  large  quantities,  and 
daily  mingles  itself  with  the  ambient  air.  It  sparkles  in  the  springs 
of  Carlsbad  ;  rushes  as  from  subterranean  bellows  on  the  table 
land  of  Paderborn  ;  chinks  in  the  pockets  of  the  Prince  of  Nassau  ; 
astonishes  innocent  travellers  in  the  Grotto  del  Cane  ;  interests 
the  chemical  geologist  in  the  caves  of  Pyrmont ;  and  is  terrible 
to  man  and  beast  in  the  fatal  '  Valley  of  Death,'  the  most  wonder 
ful  of  the  wonders  of  Java.  And,  besides,  it  doubtless  issues  still 
more  abundantly  from  the  unknown  bottom  of  the  expanded  waters 
which  occupy  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  surface  of  the  globe. 
From  these  many  sources,  continually  flowing  into  the  air,  or  rising 
into  the  sea,  carbonic  acid  is  daily  supplied  in  place  of  that  which 
is  daily  withdrawn,  to  be  buried  in  the  solid  crust.  Did  we  know 
after  what  lapse  of  time  the  earth  would  again  breathe  out  what  is 
thus  daily  entombed,  we  should  be  able  to  express  in  words  how 
long  this  slowly  revolving  secular  wheel  requires  fully  to  perform 
one  of  its  immense  gyrations. 

"  Thus,  like  the  watery  vapor  of  the  atmosphere,  its  carbonic  acid 
also  is  continually  circulating.  While  that  which  floats  in  the  air, 
during  one  generation,  circles  many  times,  it  may  be,  from  the 
atmosphere  to  the  plant,  from  the  plant  to  the  animal,  and  from 
the  animal  to  the  air  again — never  really  the  property  of  any,  and 
never  lingering  long  in  one  stay — the  whole  created  carbon  is 
slowly  moving  in  a  greater  circle  between  earth  and  air.  It  rises 
from  the  earth  at  one  end  of  the  curve  in  the  state  of  an  elastic 
gas;  it  amuses  itself  by  the  way  in  assuming  for  brief  intervals  many 
successive  varieties  of  plant-form  and  animal-form,  till  it  is  finally 
6 


74  CHAPTER  III.   §  2. 

buried  in  the  earth  again,  at  the  other  end  of  the  curve,  in  the 
state  of  solid  limestone  and  fossil  plants."* 

The  beds  of  limestone  resulting  from  the  labor  of  these  little 
beings,  who  thus  absorb  carbonic  acid  from  the  atmosphere,  become 
in  their  turn  nuclei  of  islands,  destined  to  furnish  places  of  abode 
for  the  lower  orders  of  animals,  and  ultimately  for  man.  What  is 
the  process  by  which  the  work  of  preparation  is  accomplished,  is 
well  described  in  the  following  passage  : — 

"  The  coral  islands  of  the  tropical  seas  present  the  most  remark 
able  examples  of  the  rapid  clothing  of  a  naked  rock  with  vegetable 
life,  and  its  preparation  for  the  habitation  of  human  beings.  The 
creatures  which  build  up  these  islands  from  unknown  depths  in  the 
ocean  partake,  as  is  indicated  by  the  name  of  their  species,  zoo 
phyte,  or  animal  plant,  in  the  characteristics  of  both  orders  of 
vitality.  They  fulfil  their  functions  without  a  heart  or  system  of 
circulation — the  several  polypi  in  a  group  have  separate  mouths 
and  tentacles,  and  separate  stomachs  ;  but  beyond  this  there  is  no 
individual  property — and  form  a  living  sheet  of  animals,  fed  and 
nourished  by  numerous  mouths  and  stomachs,  but  coalescing  by 
intervening  tissues.  They  possess  no  more  power  of  motion  than 
is  sufficient  to  thrust  out  their  arms  to  seize  the  food  that  drifts 
past  them,  and  they  propagate  by  buds,  the  bud  commencing  as  a 
slight  prominence  on  the  side  of  the  parent ;  the  bud  enlarges,  a 
circle  of  tentacles  grows  out,  with  a  mouth  in  the  centre,  and  the 
enlargement  goes  on  till  the  young  equals  the  parent  in  size,  when 
it  begins  to  protrude  buds  itself — and  the  group  thus  continues  to 
grow.  They  secrete  the  coral  as  the  quadruped  secretes  its  bones, 
until  single  reefs  are  formed  and  attain  the  surface  of  the  water. 
But  it  is  essential  to  the  life  of  these  submarine  builders  that  they 
should  be  covered  by  the  waves,  and  when  they  have  reached  low 
water  mark  they  die.  A  new  process  now  begins,  in  the  accumu 
lation  of  loose  materials  upon  its  summit,  from  coral  boulder — 
broken  off  from  the  reef  by  the  waves,  thrown  up  from  below,  and 
gradually  ground  into  fragments — coral  gravel  and  sand.  Agassiz 
states  that  all  that  portion  of  Florida  known  as  the  Everglades  is 
only  a  vast  coral  bank,  composed  of  a  series  of  more  or  less 
parallel  reefs,  which  have  successively  grown  from  the  bottom  of 
.tbe  sea  up  to  the  surface,  and  have  been  added  to  the  main  land, 

*  Dr.  Johnston,  in  Blackicood's  Magazine,  May,  1853. 


OP  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  75 

by  the  gradual  filling  of  the  intervals  which  separate  them  with 
deposits  of  the  coralline  sand,  and  debris  brought  thither  by  the 
action  of  the  tides  and  the  currents. 

"  The  cocoanut,  with  its  husk,  being  well  adapted  to  be  wafted 
by  the  waves,  it  takes  root  upon  the  naked  sand  of  the  coral  island, 
just  lifted  above  the  level  of  the  ocean,  and,  washed  by  the  spray, 
grows  luxuriantly.  Nourished  at  first  by  only  so  much  of  organic 
aliment  as  the  remains  of  the  zoophytes,  who  build  the  island,  sup 
ply,  the  decay  of  its  leaves  soon  furnishes  a  mould  which  suffices  for 
other  vegetable  growth.  Its  uses  are  manifold  :  the  inhabitants, 
when  they  come,  find  in  it  material  for  the  scanty  dresses  which 
the  climate  requires,  drinking-vessels  from  the  shell  of  its  nut,  and 
other  utensils,  mats,  cordage,  fishing-lines,  and  oil,  besides  food, 
drink,  and  building  materials.  In  every  stage,  from  its  first  forma 
tion  after  the  fall  of  the  blossom,  to  the  hard,  dry,  and  ripe  nut, 
that  has  almost  begun  to  germinate,  the  fruit  may  be  seen  at  the 
same  time,  on  the  same  tree.  The  pandanus,  or  screw-pine,  another 
tree  which  soon  roots  itself  in  the  scanty  soil,  throwing  out  props 
from  the  trunk,  which  plant  themselves  in  the  ground,  and  widen 
the  supporting  base  as  it  grows,  furnishes  a  sweetish,  husky  fruit, 
'  which,  though  a  little  bitter,'  says  Mr.  Dana,  in  his  Geology  of 
the  Exploring  Expedition,  from  which  these  facts  are  drawn, 
'admits  of  being  stored  away  for  food  when  other  things  fail.' 
Fish  and  crabs  from  the  reefs,  and  the  large  fish  caught  with 
wooden  hooks  from  the  deep  waters,  eke  out  the  subsistence  of 
the  natives.  '  From  such  scanty  resources,'  says  Mr.  Dana,  '  a 
population  of  10,000  persons  is  supported  on  the  single  island  of 
Tapnteouea,  whose  habitable  area  does  not  exceed  six  square  miles.' 

"  The  process  in  this  case,  by  which  the  emerging  peak  of  the 
submarine  mountain  is  fitted  by  the  germination  of  vegetation  for 
a  human  abode,  is  rapid.  That  by  which  the  peaks  of  the  land 
mountain  have  crumbled  into  soil  involves  more  intermediate 
stages,  and  a  much  greater  variety  of  results.  Some  of  the  rocks, 
such  as  slates  and  shales,  decompose  with  such  facility,  that  the 
whole  process  may  be  observed  within  a  brief  period,  and  we  have 
constant  opportunities  of  watching  its  progress.  The  granitic 
rocks,  however,  which,  constituting  in  the  view  of  geologists  the 
lower  and  earlier  strata,  have  been  made,  upon  the  disruption  and 
upheaving  of  the  crust  of  the  earth,  to  occupy  the  highest  place, 


76  CHAPTER  III.   §  2. 

are  of  a  less  frangible  character.  But  their  chemical  composition 
is  such  as  to  favor  their  speedy  disintegration  under  the  action  of 
the  elements.  The  presence  of  alkalies  in  the  feldspar  and  mica, 
which  are  combined  with  silex  in  granite,  exerts  a  powerful  influ 
ence  in  this  change.  Carbonic  acid,  the  great  solvent  for  the 
hardest  materials,  decomposes  the  potash  with  which  silica  is  com 
bined  in  the  feldspar,  and  it  is  made  soluble.  The  intensity  of  the 
frost,  and  the  length  of  time  during  which  rocks  on  the  mountain 
tops  are  exposed  to  it,  the  suddenness  of  the  changes  of  tempera 
ture  to  which  they  are  subjected,  and  which,  from  their  being  poor 
conductors  of  heat,  involve  an  inequality  in  the  contraction  and 
expansion  of  the  surface  and  the  interior,  which  induces  flaking 
and  cracking,  the  dampness  of  the  air  during  the  summer,  when 
watery  vapors  condense  upon  their  summits,  are  among  the  cir 
cumstances  which  hasten  the  destruction  of  rocks  in  these  places. 
As  disintegration  is  accomplished  by  the  process  of  weathering, 
the  decomposed  particles  fall  by  their  own  weight,  and  are  washed 
by  the  rains  into  the  valleys  beneath,  which  receive  in  the  same 
manner  the  contributions  of  the  intermediate  rocks.  During  this 
process,  the  rocks  are  not  merely  mechanically  broken  into  small 
fragments,  but  from  their  insoluble  constituents,  soluble  salts,  as 
those  of  lime,  soda,  &c.,  are  generated,  which  may  be  absorbed  by 
the  root  of  plants.  In  the  decomposition  of  feldspar,  the  silicate 
of  potassa  is  gradually  removed  by  the  water,  and  while  the  sand 
remains  upon  the  sloping  surfaces,  the  fine  alumina  or  clay  accu 
mulates  in  the  valleys,  and  forms  a  mixture  of  clay  and  sand,  which 
is  more  favorable  to  the  support  of  grass  and  grain.  Thus  every 
gradation  is  presented,  from  the  naked  granite  of  the  hill-tops 
through  the  thin,  porous  soils  of  the  slopes,  to  the  rich  meadow 
lands  of  the  valleys. 

"  Yegetation  of  some  kind,  however,  can  find  nourishment  even 
on  the  surface  of  the  rock.*  Lichens  and  alga?  grow  high  above 

*  "  Look  at  a  recently  exposed  surface  of  a  block  of  granite  for  instance,  on 
the  summit  of  the  Brocken  ;  there  we  find  that  vegetation  is  soon  developed, 
in  the  form  of  a  little  delicate  plant,  which  requires  the  microscope  for  its 
recognition  ;  and  this  is  nourished  hy  the  small  quantity  of  atmospheric 
water  impregnated  with  carbonic  acid  and  ammonia.  This,  the  so-called 
violet-stone,  a  scarlet,  pulverulent  coating  over  the  bare  stone,  which  on 
account  of  the  peculiar  smell  of  violets  which  it  emits  when  rubbed,  has 
become  a  curiosity,  industriously  sought  by  the  thoughtful  wanderer  on 
the  Brocken.  By  the  gradual  decay  and  decomposition  of  this  little  plant, 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  7  7 

the  line  of  perpetual  snow ;  and  in  bleak  northern  climes,  upon 
the  bare  face  of  the  granite  rock,  a  species  of  lichens  flourishes, 
which  the  hunger-pinched  Canadian  voyageur  seeks  for  food,  and 
gives  the  appetizing  name  of  '  tripe  de  rocheS  Decaying  vegetable 
matter  of  such  kinds  is  swept  by  every  shower  down  hill,  to  accu 
mulate  at  the  base  with  the  deposits  of  mineral  origin.  After  a 
sufficient  period,  a  soil  is  thus  formed  at  the  bottom  of  the  slopes, 
which  is  capable  of  sustaining  heavy  timber.  The  first  tree  sheds 
its  leaves  and  branches  to  feed  the  fattening  soil,  in  a  circle  around 
its  trunk,  whose  area  is  measured  by  the  spread  of  its  branches. 
The  probable  process  from  this  starting-point  is  this :  Upon  the 
outer  circumference  of  the  first  circle  thus  nourished,  and  that  edge 
of  it,  which,  lying  between  the  trunk  and  the  hill-top,  upon  the 
ascending  slope,  is  inferior  to  the  lowest  point  in  the  collected 
elements  of  vegetable  nutrition,  it  becomes  possible  for  another 
tree  to  grow.  This,  in  its  turn,  becomes  the  centre  of  a  circle  of 
fertilized  ground,  upon  whose  upper  exterior  the  material  to  sup 
port  a  new  growth  is  accumulated,  by  the  droppings  of  its  stem 
and  branches.  Each  new  plant  thus  manures  the  ground  for  its 
successor,  and  vegetation  creeps  up  the  hill-side,  along  a  soil  of 
constantly  diminishing  richness,  and  which,  though  made  more  fat 
and  tenacious  by  its  growth,  is  always  parting  with  some  portion 
of  its  mineral  and  vegetable  elements  to  fatten  the  valley  beneath 
it.  The  process,  like  so  many  others  in  the  operations  of  nature, 
is  one  of  action  and  reaction,  of  a  disturbance  of  equilibrium  which 
sets  at  work  the  machinery  for  its  own  restoration.  The  elemental 
forces,  gravitation,  and  the  wash  of  running  water,  carry  to  the 

a  very  thin  layer  of  humus  is  by  degrees  produced,  which  now  suffices  to  pro 
cure  from  the  atmosphere  food  sufficient  for  a  couple  of  great  blackish-brown 
lichens.  These  lichens,  which  densely  clothe  the  heaps  of  earth  round  the 
shafts  of  the  mines  of  Fahlun  and  Dannemora  in  Sweden,  and  through  their 
gloomy  color,  which  they  impress  on  all  around,  make  those  pits  and  shafts 
look  like  the  gloomy  abysses  of  death,  have  been  appropriately  called  by  the 
botanists  the  Stygian  and  Fahluii  lichens.  But  they  are  no  messengers  of 
death  here  :  their  decay  prepares  the  soil  for  the  elegant  little  Alpine  moss, 
the  destruction  of  which  is  speedily  followed  by  the  appearance  of  greener 
and  more  luxuriant  mosses,  until  sufficient  soil  has  been  formed  for  the 
whortleberry,  the  juniper,  and  finally  for  the  pine.  Thus,  from  an  insignifi 
cant  beginning,  an  ever-increasing  coating  of  humus  grows  up  over  the 
naked  rock,  and  a  vegetation,  continually  stronger  and  more  luxuriant, 
takes  up  its  position,  not  to  be  nourished  on  that  humus,  which  increases 
instead  of  decreasing  with  every  decaying  generation,  but  by  its  means  to 
be  supplied  with  nourishment  from  the  atmosphere." — Schleiden,  The  Plant. 
p.  162. 


78  CHAPTER  III.  §  2. 

lowest  levels  the  mineral  and  organic  nutriment  for  vegetation  ; 
and  vegetation,  thus  originated,  carries  them  back  again  up  the 
slopes,  preparing  a  soil  for  its  own  progress  as  it  goes.  The 
slimmest  and  scantiest  vegetation  is  always  in  the  advance,  like 
the  pioneers  and  light  troops  who  clear  the  ground  for  the  heavy 
columns  of  an  army."* 

The  plant  is  thus,  as  we  see,  a  manufacturer  of  soil,  and  what,  in 
this  respect,  is  true  of  it,  is  equally  so  of  all  the  living  and  moving 
beings  that  walk  the  face  of  earth.  The  development  commenced 
in  the  stomach  of  the  plant  is  continued  and  carried  out  in 
that  of  the  man,  who  has  been  well  compared  to  a  locomotive  engine. 
Into  the  stomach  of  the  latter  we  introduce  fuel  under  circumstances 
tending  to  promote  its  decomposition,  or  motion  of  the  elements  of 
which  it  is  composed — and  this  motion  gives  force.  The  man 
takes  into  his  stomach,  as  fuel,  the  various  products  of  the  vegeta 
ble  and  animal  kingdom,  and  there  they  are  subjected  to  the  pro 
cess  of  decomposition,  whence  result  vital  heat  and  force.  The 
manner  in  which  plants  and  animals  combine  to  produce  this  in 
creasing  motion,  is  well  exhibited  in  the  following  passage  : — 

"  Man  himself,  and  other  animals,  assist  in  the  same  conversion. 
They  consume  vegetable  food  with  the  same  final  result  as  when  it 
perishes  by  actual  decay,  or  is  destroyed  by  the  agency  of  fire.  It 
is  conveyed  into  the  stomach  in  the  form  in  which  the  plant  yields 
it ;  it  is  breathed  out  again  from  the  lungs  and  the  skin,  in  the 
form  of  carbonic  acid  and  water.  We  can  follow  out  this  opera 
tion,  however,  more  closely,  and  it  will  be  both  interesting  and 
instructive  to  do  so. 

"  The  leaf  of  the  living  plant  sucks  in  carbonic  acid  from  the  air 
and  gives  off  the  oxygen  contained  in  this  gas.  It  retains  only  the 
carbon.  The  roots  drink  in  water  from  the  soil,  and  out  of  this 
carbon  and  water  the  plant  forms  starch,  sugar,  fat,  and  other 
substance.  The  animal  introduces  this  starch,  sugar  or  fat,  into 
its  stomach,  and  draws  in  oxygen  from  the  atmosphere  by  its  lungs  ; 
and  with  these  materials  it  undoes  the  previous  labors  of  the  living 
plant,  delivering  back  again  from  the  lungs  and  the  skin  both  the 
starch  and  the  oxygen  in  the  form  of  carbonic  acid  and  water. 
The  process  is  clearly  represented  in  the  following  scheme  : — 

« 

*  Smith.     Manual  of  Pol.  Econ.  p.  38. 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  79 

Takes  in  Produces 


/  Stardi  anrf/a*  in  the  stomach  ;  J  C'a/6<w»*c    acid  .  and 
THE  ANIMAL,    |  Qxygen  .nt£  the  lungg>  |      from   the   skin  and    the 


"  The  circle  begins  with  carbonic  acid  and  water,  and  ends  with 
the  same  substances.  The,  same  material  —  the  same  carbon,  for 
example  —  circulates  over  and  over  again,  now  floating  in  the 
invisible  air,  now  forming  the  substance  of  the  growing  plant,  now 
of  the  moving  animal,  and  now  again  dissolving  into  the  air,  ready 
to  begin  anew  the  same  endless  revolution.  It  forms  part  of  a 
vegetable  to-day  —  it  may  be  built  into  the  body  of  a  man  to-mor 
row  ;  and,  a  week  hence,  it  may  have  passed  through  another  plant 
into  another  animal.  What  is  mine  this  week  is  yours  the  next. 
There  is,  in  truth,  no  private  property  in  ever-moving  matter."* 

§  3.  In  the  early  periods  of  society  the  changes  of  form  are  very 
slow,  and  thus  we  see  that,  in  the  days  of  the  Plantagenets,  and 
for  centuries  afterwards,  the  yield  of  an  acre  of  land  was  but  six 
or  eight  bushels  of  wheat.  Small  as  it  was,  it  was,  nevertheless, 
attended  with  constant  improvement  in  the  form  of  matter  result 
ing  from  the  motion  that  thus  far  had  been  obtained.  The  rocks 
had  been  decomposed,  and  the  clays  and  the  sands  had  taken  upon 
themselves  a  higher  form  —  and  the  beautiful  green  of  the  wheat 
had  replaced  the  sombre  brown  of  the  earth.  Step  by  step,  how 
ever,  man  is  seen  obtaining  higher  command  of  the  various  forces 
provided  for  his  use,  and  passing  onward  until  at  a  later  period  he 
obtains  thirty,  forty,  and  fifty  bushels  to  the  acre  ;  while  of  other 
commodities  they  count  by  hundreds. 

Without  vital  heat  this  command  could  not  be  obtained,  and 
without  fuel  there  could  be  no  heat.  That  fuel,  as  we  see,  is  food, 
without  which  there  can  be  no  vital  action  —  and  thus  it  is  that  we 
reach  the  point  at  which  man  and  other  animals  stand  upon  a  level 
with  each  other.  In  common  with  them  all,  he  eats,  drinks,  and 
sleeps,  and  in  common  with  them  he  must  obtain  supplies  of  food. 

Looking  around,  he  sees  vast  bodies  of  matter  held  in  a  quies- 

*  Blackwood's  Magazine,  May,  1853. 


80  CHAPTER  III.   §  3. 

cent  state,  by  reason  of  the  force  of  gravitation,  and  therefore 
unproductive.  It  is  a  magazine  of  power,  latent,  waiting  help  to 
set  it  free.  The  hard  soil  yields  scanty  herbage,  but  he  now 
loosens  it  so  as  to  expose  its  particles  to  the  action  of  the  sun  and 
the  rain,  and,  that  done,  he  places  therein  a  seed  ready  to  receive 
into  its  stomach  the  food  required  for  its  nourishment.  It  sprouts, 
and  the  plant  grows  by  aid  of  earth  and  atmosphere,  yielding  the 
oats,  the  rye,  or  the  corn  required  for  his  support,  or  that  of  the 
animals  on  which  he  feeds.  In  all  this,  however,  he  has  done  no 
more  than  is  done  by  the  man  who  feeds  the  locomotive,  placing 
matter  in  a  situation  to  become  decomposed,  and  thus  giving  indi 
viduality  to  its  atoms,  by  help  of  which  they  are  enabled  to  com 
bine  with  other  atoms.  The  act  of  combination  is  one  of  motion, 
and  that  motion  gives  force. 

To  accomplish  this,  he  has  ploughed  deeper,  and  has  enabled  a 
larger  quantity  of  soil  to  become  presented  to  the  action  of  the 
rain  and  the  sun.  He  has  dug  drains,  and  has  thus  enabled  the 
water  to  run  off,  that  otherwise  would  have  remained  stagnant  and 
would  have  destroyed  his  seed  ;  and  precisely  as  he  has  thus  facili 
tated  the  motion  of  matter  he  has  found  himself  rewarded  by  a 
more  rapid  increase  in  the  quantity  that  has  taken  upon  itself  the 
form  required  for  his  purposes. 

The  greater  the  motion,  the  more  rapid  is  the  improvement  in 
the  form.  The  stiff  pine  gives  way  to  the  graceful  barley,  while 
beautiful  fields  of  clover  replace  the  rank  weeds  of  the  swamp,  and. 
the  gaunt  wolf  disappears  from  the  land  that  now  maintains  the 
high-bred  horse  and  well-formed  man. 

With  increased  control  over  the  natural  forces,  he  is  thus  enabled 
to  obtain  a  constant  increase  of  food  from  any  given  surface,  with 
steady  increase  in  the  power  to  live  in  connection  with  his  fellow 
man.  Association  grows,  giving  in  its  turn  power  to  bring  into 
activity  other  forces  that  thus  far  have  remained  dormant  and 
waiting  the  help  of  man.  He  turns  up  the  limestone  and  subjects 
it  to  the  process  of  decomposition,  furnishing  carbonic  acid  to  the 
air,  and  giving  quicklime  to  the  earth.  He  digs  the  coal,  and  that 
in  its  turn  is  decomposed,  furnishing  to  the  atmosphere  new  sup 
plies  of  the  material  that  is  to  be  recomposed  in  the  form  of  vege 
tables  for  his  nourishment.  He  mines  the  iron  ore,  to  be  decomposed 
by  help  of  coal,  and  here  again  are  new  supplies  of  the  materials 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  81 

required  for  the  support  of  organic  life  ;  and  furnished,  too,  by  the 
very  process  required  for  giving  him  instruments  needed  for  the 
work  of  cultivation.  The  matter  thus  decomposed  continues  in 
motion,  and  must  so  continue  while  men  increase  in  the  power  of 
association.  The  various  ores  never  again  return  to  their  original 
form,  nor  does  the  lime  become  again  limestone,  after  it  has  entered 
into  the  composition  of  food.  Eaten,  it  returns  again  to  the  atmo 
sphere,  or  to  the  earth,  and  the  man  himself  at  length  dies  and  is 
buried,  and  thus  repays  the  debt  he  owes  to  nature.  Even,  how 
ever,  while  still  living,  he  is  constantly  absorbing  and  giving  out 
again  to  the  earth  and  atmosphere  the  atoms  of  which  his  system 
is  composed,  as  is  well  explained  in  the  following  passage  : — 

"  In  natural  forests,  where  the  leaves  are  annually  shed  and  the 
trees  periodically  die,  the  mineral  matter  quits  the  soil  for  the 
plant,  and  again,  in  the  decaying  plant,  returns  to  the  soil,  thus 
making  but  a  short  stage  up  and  down  from  earth  to  plant,  and 
from  plant  back  to  the  earth  again.  And  it  is  so  also  in  natural 
meadows,  where  yearly  in  autumn  the  grass  ripens,  withers,  and 
returns  its  mineral  matter  to  the  soil,  and  yearly  again  in  spring 
the  young  herbage  springs  up  and  feeds  on  the  relics  of  the  pre 
vious  year.  But  it  is  different  when  the  vegetable  produce  is  con 
sumed  by  animals.  It  then  enters  into  their  stomachs,  is  dissolved 
or  digested,  and  its  several  parts  taken  up  by  vessels  provided  for 
the  purpose,  to  be  conveyed  to  the  parts  of  the  body  where  their 
services  are  required.  The  saline  matter  we  need  not  at  present 
follow  further  than  the  blood  and  the  tissues.  The  phosphoric 
acid  and  the  lime — in  the  form  of  phosphate  of  lime — are  chiefly 
deposited  in  the  bones. 

"  The  importance  of  this  phosphate  of  lime  to  the  animal 
economy  will  be  apparent,  when  we  mention  that  ordinarily  dry 
bones  leave,  on  burning,  half  their  weight  of  a  white  ash,  which 
consists  for  the  most  part  of  phosphate  of  lime. 

"  But,  as  we  have  already  explained,  all  the  parts  of  the  body, 
even  the  most  solid,  are  in  a  constant  course  of  renewal.  To  this 
law  of  change  the  bones  are  subject  equally  with  the  soft  parts, 
and  the  phosphoric  acid  carried  in  to-day  is  in  a  few  days  carried 
out  again,  mixed  up  with  the  other  refuse  and  excretions  of  the 
body  ;  and  finally  the  body  itself  dies,  and  all  its  material  parts 
are  at  once  returned  to  the  earth  from  which  it  came.  There  they 


82  CHAPTER  III.  §  3. 

undergo,  through  the  agency  of  the  air,  a  complete  breaking-lip 
or  decomposition,  by  which  their  mineral  matter  itself  is  brought 
into  a  condition  in  which  it  can  enter  usefully  into  the  roots  of 
new  plants.  There  are  other  minutiae  in  reference  to  the  revolu 
tion  of  this  mineral  matter  which  are  full  of  interest,  but  we  will 
not  try  the  patience  of  our  readers  by  insisting  upon  them  in  this 
place.  The  general  changes  we  have  indicated  are  represented 
briefly  as  follows  : — 

Taken  in  by  Produced 

{Phosphoric  acid,   lime,  com-"| 

mon   and  other  salts  from  [•  Perfect  substance  of  plants. 
the  soil.  j 

{-    ,  f  Perfect  bone,  blood,  and  Us 

er.  Parts  of  plants.  -j      sues> 

b.  The  bone  and  tissues,  with  f  Phosphates  and  other  salts 
oxygen  from  the  lungs.          \      in  the  excretions. 

m      (2  /Excretions   of  animals,  dead  f  Phosphoric  acid,  lime,  &c. 

I      animals  and  plants.  \     &c. 

"  It  may  be  that  a  careful  hunter  after  human  earth  might  scrape 
together  as  much  as  would  'stop  a  hole  to  keep  the  wind  away.' 
But  our  science  teaches  us  that  the  earth  is  not  the  kind  of  stuff 
that  clay  is  made  of,  and  such  vile  uses  are,  after  all,  only  imagi 
nary  slights  to  which  our  cherished  ashes  can  never  be  subjected. 
They  have  another  appointed  use,  from  which,  treat  them  as  they 
may,  they  cannot  long  be  kept.  The  plant  is  wonderfully  framed,  so 
as  not  to  grow  without  the  phosphoric  acid,  &c.,  which  it  is  bound 
to  gather  up  and  supply  to  the  growing  animal.  And  the  soil  is  so 
poorly  provided  with  these  and  other  necessary  substances,  that 
plant  and  animal  are  both  ordained  to  return  without  fail  their  bor 
rowed  material  to  mother  earth  when  the  term  of  life  has  come.  Thus 
a  constant  circulation  of  the  same  comparatively  small  quantity  of 
mineral  matter  is  secured,  and  a  duty  is  laid  upon  each  particle 
zealously  to  prepare  for  a  new  service,  as  soon  as  each  earlier  com 
mission  is  performed.  As  we  have  no  property  in,  so  we  ought  to 
have  no  foolish  affection  or  reverence  for  dead  ashes  ;  and  certainly 
we  ought  to  have  no  fear  that  they  can  ever  long  be  withheld  from 
connecting  themselves,  in  some  form  or  other,  with  new  phases  of 
vegetable  and  animal  life."* 

"  Plant  and  animal  are  both,"  as  we  here  see,  ordained  to  return 

*  Ibid. 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  83 

their  borrowed  materials  to  mother  earth,"  and  it  is  upon  this  con 
dition  only  that  motion  can  be  increased,  or  even  maintained.  Our 
great  mother,  Earth,  gives  nothing,  but  she  is  willing  to  lend  every 
thing,  and  the  larger  the  demand  made  upon  her  the  larger  will  be 
the  supply,  provided,  that  man  always  recollects  that  he  is  but  a 
borrower  from  a  great  bank,  in  which  punctuality  is  as  much 
required  as  it  is  in  the  banks  of  America,  France,  or  England. 

That  this  condition  may  be  complied  with,  there  must  be  asso 
ciation,  and  difference  is  in  the  social,  as  well  as  in  the  material 
world,  indispensable  to  association.  The  man  whose  land  yields 
corn  does  not  require  to  associate  with  his  brother  corn  grower ; 
the  sugar  planter  does  not  need  to  exchange  with  his  neighbor 
planter — nor  does  the  wool  grower  require  to  meet  his  brother 
farmer  who  also  has  wool  to  sell — but  they,  each  and  all,  find  it 
advantageous  to  exchange  labor  and  its  products  with  the  carpen 
ter,  the  blacksmith,  the  mason,  the  sawmiller,  the  miner,  the  furnace 
man,  the  spinner,  the  weaver,  and  the  printer,  as  all  of  these  require 
to  purchase  food,  and  to  give  in  pay  for  it  their  services,  or  the  vari 
ous  commodities  with  which  they  have  to  part.  Where  there  is 
diversity  of  employment,  the  producer  and  the  consumer  take  their 
places  by  the  side  of  each  other,  and  there  is  rapid  motion  among 
the  products  of  labor,  with  constant  increase  in  the  power  to  repay 
to  mother  earth  her  loans,  and  to  establish  with  her  a  credit  for 
larger  ones  in  future.  Where,  on  the  contrary,  there  are  none  but 
farmers  or  planters,  and  where  consequently  there  is  no  motion 
in  society,  the  producer  and  the  consumer  are  so  widely  separated 
that  the  power  to  repay  the  loans  from  the  great  bank  dies  away, 
and  motion  gradually  ceases  among  the  particles  of  the  earth  itself 
— as  we  see  to  be  the  case  in  all  the  purely  agricultural  countries. 
Virginia  and  the  Carolinas  have  been  steadily  engaged  in  exhaust 
ing  the  elements  of  fertility  originally  contained  in  the  soil,  because 
of  the  absence  of  consumers,  and  the  necessity  for  dependence  on 
distant  markets ;  and  such,  to  a  great  extent,  is  the  case  through 
out  this  country,  and  particularly  in  the  Southern  States.  The 
farmer  who  commences  on  rich  prairie  land,  obtains  at  first  forty 
or  fifty  bushels  of  corn  to  the  acre,  but  the  quantity  declines  from 
year  to  year,  and  finally  falls  to  fifteen  or  twenty  bushels.  A 
century  since,  the  farmers  of  New  York  were  accustomed  to  obtain 
twenty-four  bushels  of  wheat,  but  the  average  now  is  but  little 


84  CHAPTER  III.   §  3. 

more  than  half  that  quantity,  while  the  rich  State  of  Ohio  has 
fallen  to  an  average  of  only  eleven  bushels,  and  with  every  step  in 
the  progress  of  decline  there  is  a  diminution  of  ability  to  associate; 
the  power  of  the  soil  to  yield  support  being  always  the  measure  of 
the  power  of  men  to  live  together.  That  this  state  of  things  must 
certainly  arise  when  the  consumer  and  the  producer  are  widely 
separated,  is  clearly  shown  in  the  remarkable  emigration  at  this 
moment  going  on  from  Ohio,  whose  settlement  commenced  but 
little  more  than  half  a  century  since  ;  from  Georgia,  with  a  popula 
tion  of  900,000,  and  with  a  territory  capable  of  supporting  half  the 
people  of  the  Union  ;  and  from  Alabama,  that  but  forty  years  since 
was  a  wilderness  occupied  chiefly  by  a  few  bands  of  straggling 
Indians.* 

"  The  plant,"  says  Professor  Johnston,  in  the  article  already  so 
largely  quoted  from,  "  is  the  servant  of  the  animal."  "  Man,"  as  he 
continues,  "placed  upon  the  earth,  without  the  previous  existence  of 
the  plant,  were  utterly  helpless.  He  could  not  live  either  upon 
earth  or  upon  air,  and  yet  his  body  requires  a  constant  supply  of 
the  elements  contained  in  each.  It  is  the  plant  which  selects,  col 
lects,  and  binds  together  these  indigestible  materials,  and  manu 
factures  them  into  food  for  man  and  other  animals.  And  these 
appear  only  to  throw  back  again  to  their  toiling  slaves  the  waste 
materials  which  they  cannot  further  use,  to  be  again  worked  up  into 
palatable  food.  In  this  aspect,  the  plant  appears  only  the  ap 
pointed  bond-servant  of  the  animal ;  and  yet,  how  willing,  how 

*  "  True  it  is  that  thorns  and  thistles,  ill-favored  and  poisonous  plants, 
well  named  by  botanists  rubbish  plants,  mark  the  track  which  man  has 
proudly  traversed  through  the  earth.  Before  him  lay  original  Nature 
in  her  wild  but  sublime  beauty.  Behind  him  he  leaves  the  desert,  a 
deformed  and  ruined  land  ;  for  childish  desire  of  destruction,  or  thought 
less  squandering  of  vegetable  treasures,  has  destroyed  the  character  of 
nature,  and,  terrified,  flies  man  himself  from  the  arena  of  his  actions,  leav 
ing  the  impoverished  earth  to  barbarous  races  or  to  animals,  so  long  as  yet 
another  spot  in  virgin  beauty  smiles  before  him.  Here  again  in  selfish 
pursuit  of  profit,  and,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  following  the  abomina 
ble  principle  of  the  great  moral  vileness  which  one  man  has  expressed, 
'  aprds  nous  le  deluge,1  he  begins  anew  the  work  of  destruction.  Thus  did 
cultivation,  driven  out,  leave  the  East,  and  perhaps  the  deserts  formerly 
robbed  of  their  coverings  ;  like  the  wild  hordes  of  old  over  beautiful  Greece, 
thus  rolls  this  conquest  with  fearful  rapidity  from  east  to  west  through 
America,  and  the  planter  now  leaves  the  already  exhausted  land,  the  east 
ern  climate  become  infertile  through  the  demolition  of  the  forests,  to  intro 
duce  a  similar  revolution  into  the  far  West." — Schleiden,  The  Plant,  p.  306. 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  85 

beautiful,  how  interesting  a  slave  it  is.  It  works  for  ever,  yet  it 
is  self-tasked.  It  toils  itself  to  death,  yet,  punctually  as  spring 
comes  round,  it  rises,  young,  beautiful,  and  willing  as  ever,  rejoic 
ing  to  resume  its  destined  work."*  It  can  do  so,  however,  only  on 
the  condition  that  "the  waste  materials"  which  man  can  no  further 
use  be  returned  to  the  place  from  whence  they  had  been  drawn. 

Those  materials,  as  we  have  seen,  come  chiefly  from  the  atmo 
sphere  ;  but,  in  order  that  they  may  be  drawn  from  thence,  it  is 
indispensable  that  the  earth  itself  should  contain  the  ingredients 
required  for  combination  with  them.")'  The  atmosphere  that  now 
rests  upon  the  worn-out  tobacco  fields  of  Virginia  contains  the 
same  elements  with  that  which  rests  upon  the  finest  farms  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  of  Belgium,  or  of  England  ;  yet  the  power  of  combina 
tion  has  no  existence,  because  certain  other  elements  have  been 
withdrawn  and  sent  abroad,  in  the  absence  of  which  there  can  be 
no  motion  in  the  soil.  While  they  existed  there,  men  could  live 
together  on  the  land ;  but  with  impoverishment  of  the  latter  the 
former  have  disappeared.  That  the  power  of  association  among 
men  may  increase,  there  must  be  a  constantly  increasing  inter 
change — motion — between  the  earth  and  the  atmosphere,  and  that 
there  cannot  be  in  any  country  where  there  is  no  diversity  of  em 
ployment  ;  and  in  which,  consequently,  the  place  of  consumption 
being  remote  from  that  of  production,  the  farmer  is  limited  to  the 
cultivation  of  such  commodities  only  as  will  bear  transportation  to 
distant  countries.  Hence  it  is  that  we  should  see  a  great  decline  in 

*  Blackwood's  Magazine. 

f  "All  the  nitrogenous  components  of  plants,  which  we  use  as  food,  consist, 
it  is  true,  of  merely  carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen  and  nitrogen.  But  the  pre 
sence  of  these  substances  alone  does  not  help  the  plant  in  the  least ;  it 
cannot  form  from  them  a  granule  of  albumen  or  gluten,  unless  it  contains, 
at  the  same  time  and  in  the  proper  relative  condition,  salts  of  phosphoric 
acid.  The  useful  starch,  the  sweet  sugar,  the  cooling  citric  acid,  the  aro 
matic  oil  of  oranges,  are  indeed  composed  solely  of  carbon,  hydrogen  and 
oxygen ;  but  the  plant  cannot  prepare  those  gifts  for  us,  out  of  ever  so 
great  an  abundance  of  these  elements,  if  it  does  not  possess  also  alkaline 
salts.  The  slender  stalk  of  the  wheat  could  not  lift  itself  to  ripen  its  grain 
in  the  sun's  rays,  unless  the  soil  furnished  it  with  silex,  through  which  it 
gives  its  cells  that  solidity  necessary  to  enable  it  to  maintain  an  erect 
position." — Schleiden,  The  Plant,  p.  206. 

"  The  conclusion  is  therefore  simple :  that  we  must  in  future  never  culti 
vate  the  potato  as  the  first  crop,  as  has  generally  been  hitherto  done  through 
out  the  greater  part  of  Europe,  but  we  must  begin  with  rye,  and  allow  the 
potato  to  follow  it,  or  perhaps  still  better,  to  come  two  years  later,  after 


86  CHAPTER  III.   §  3. 

the  productive  powers  of  the  land  in  those  countries  of  the  eastern 
continent  in  which  there  are  few  or  no  manufactures — Ireland, 
Portugal,  Turkey,  India,  and  others.  Hence,  too,  it  is  that  with 
declining  population  and  diminished  motion  in  society,  we  see 
the  difficulty  of  obtaining  food  increasing  with  diminution  of  the 
numbers  requiring  to  be  fed.  Famines  are  now  more  frequent  in 
India  than  they  were  a  century  since  when  the  population  was  far 
more  numerous,  and  when  combination  of  action  existed  through 
out  that  country.  Looking  to  past  ages,  we  see  everywhere  facts 
of  a  similar  kind.  The  valley  of  the  Euphrates  once  exhibited 
millions  of  well-fed  men  ;  but  as  they  passed  away  motion  ceased, 
and  its  few  straggling  occupants  now  obtain  with  difficulty  the 
means  of  supporting  life.  When  the  African  province  was  well 
peopled,  its  people  were  well  fed,  but  the  few  who  now  remain 
perish  for  want  of  food.  So  has  it  been  in  Attica  and  in  Greece 
generally,  in  Asia  Minor,  in  Egypt,  everywhere  in  fact.  Associa 
tion,  combination  of  action,  is  required  to  enable  man  to  obtain 
control  over  the  various  forces  existing  in  nature — and  that  com 
bination  can  never  take  place  except  when  the  loom  and  the  spindle 
take  their  natural  places  by  the  side  of  the  plough  and  the  harrow. 
The  consumer  must  take  his  place  by  the  side  of  the  producer,  to 
enable  man  to  comply  with  the  condition  upon  which  he  obtains 
loans  from  the  great  bank  of  mother  Earth — the  simple  condition 
that  when  he  has  done  with  the  capital  furnished  to  him  he  will 
return  it  to  the  place  from  which  it  had  been  taken. 

In  all  those  countries  in  which  this  condition  is  complied  with, 
we  see  a  steady  increase  in  the  motion  of  the  matter  destined  to 
furnish  man  with  food,  and  equally  steady  increase  in  the  number 
of  persons  requiring  to  be  supplied,  with  constant  improvement  in 
the  quantity  and  quality  of  food  to  be  divided  among  an  increasing 
population.  In  the  days  of  the  Plantagenets  and  Lancasters, 
when  the  population  of  England  but  little  exceeded  two  millions, 
an  acre  of  land  yielded  but  six  bushels  of  wheat,  and,  small  as 

clover,  if  we  would  raise  a  healthy  produce,  and  in  future  be  rid  of  the 
plague  to  which  we  have  recently  been  subject.  The  fundamental  propo 
sition  will  henceforward  stand  firmly  established,  that  the  nutrient  matter 
which  the  plant  itself  takes  up  from  the  soil  consists  essentially  only  of 
the  inorganic  constituents  of  the  same,  and  that  these,  and  not  the  organic 
substances,  constitute  the  peculiar  richness  of  a  soil." — Ibid.,  p.  181. 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  87 

were  the  numbers  to  be  fed,  famines  were  frequent  and  severe.  In 
our  day,  we  see  eighteen  millions  occupying  the  same  surface,  and 
obtaining  greatly  increased  supplies  of  very  superior  food. 

Looking  to  France,  we  meet  precisely  similar  facts.  In  1760, 
the  population  was  21,000,000,  and  the  total  produce  of  grain  was 
94,500,000  hectolitres;  whereas,  in  1840,  the  former  had  risen  to 
34,000,000,  and  the  latter  to  182,516,000  hectolitres,  giving  to 
each  person  twenty  per  cent,  more  in  quantity  in  the  latter  than  in 
the  earlier  period,  with  great  improvement  in  the  quality  of  the 
grain  itself ;  and  yet  the  surface  appropriated  to  the  cultivation  of 
the  cereals  has  scarcely  at  all  increased.  In  the  same  time  the 
potato  culture  has  been  introduced,  and  green  crops  of  various 
kinds  now  furnish  supplies  of  food  that  themselves  alone  are  two- 
thirds  as  great  as  the  whole  quantity  produced  but  eighty  years 
before.*  The  total  product  has  been  trebled  in  that  time,  while 
the  numbers  to  be  fed  have  increased  but  60  per  cent.  The 
French  peasant  now  pays  his  debts  to  mother  earth,  returning 
to  her  the  manure  yielded  by  his  crops,  and  he  is  enabled  so 
to  do,  because  of  the  growing  diversity  of  employment ;  whereas, 
at  an  earlier  period,  when  manufactures  had  scarcely  an  existence 
in  that  country,  famines  were  so  numerous  and  sometimes  so 
severe  as  to  sweep  off  a  large  proportion  of  the  very  scattered 
population. 

So  it  is  in  Belgium,  in  Germany,  and  in  every  other  country  in 
which  diversity  of  employment — difference — facilitates  the  work  of 
association ;  while  precisely  the  reverse  is  observed  in-  all  those 
purely  agricultural  countries  that  are  steadily  employed  in  exhaust 
ing  the  soil,  and  diminishing  the  power  of  association,  as  we  see 
to  have  been  so  uniformly  the  case  in  Virginia  and  Carolina  on 
this  side  of  the  ocean,  and  Portugal  and  Turkey  on  the  other. 

With  every  step  in  the  progress  towards  increased  power  to 
associate  resulting  from  increased  motion  among  the  elements  of 

*  The  facts  are  thus  stated  by  M.  de  Jonnifs,  in  his  Statistique  de  V Agri 
culture  de  France. 

1760.     1840. 

Wheat  .  .  .150       208  litres. 

Inferior  grains  .  .  300       333 

Potatoes  and  green  crops          .  291 

Total  per  head         ...  450       832 


88  CHAPTER  III.   §  4. 

which  food  is  composed,  man  is  enabled  to  call  to  his  help  other 
forces  to  be  employed  in  grinding  his  grain  and  transporting  its 
product  to  market — in  converting  his  trees  into  planks  and  pre 
paring  them  for  the  construction  of  houses — in  converting  his  wool 
into  cloth — and  finally,  in  carrying  his  messages  with  such  rapid 
ity  that  time  and  space  seem  almost  annihilated.  With  each, 
he  is  enabled  more  and  more  to  economize  his  own  labors,  and  to 
devote  his  time  and  mind  with  increased  force  to  the  production  of 
the  grain  that  is  to  be  ground,  the  trees  that  are  to  be  sawed,  or  the 
wool  that  is  to  be  converted,  and  thus  to  make  provision  for 
increased  association  with  his  fellow-man,  and  increased  corre 
spondence  with  the  distant  ones,  each  step  being  but  the  prepara 
tion  for  a  new  and  greater  one. 

"With  the  development  of  the  latent  powers  of  the  earth  there  is 
thus  a  daily  increasing  tendency  towards  increase  in  the  movement 
of  matter,  and  improvement  of  the  form  in  which  it  exists,  passing 
from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic,  and  terminating  in  its  highest 
one — that  of  man.  The  more  that  matter  tends  to  take  upon 
itself  this  highest  form,  the  more  rapidly  does  the  power  of  asso 
ciation  grow,  with  constantly  increasing  power  on  the  part  of 
man  to  direct  the  great  forces  of  nature,  accompanied  by  an  equally 
rapid  growth  of  individuality,  or  power  of  self-government — war 
ranting  us  in  holding  him  to  a  constant  increase  of  responsibility. 

§  4.  The  law  of  the  relative  increase  in  the  numbers  of  mankind, 
and  in  the,  supply  of  food  and  other  commodities  required  for  their 
support,  will  now  be  found  in  the  following  propositions  : — 

Motion  gives  force,  and  the  more  rapid  the  motion  the  greater 
is  the  force  obtained. 

With  motion  matter  takes  upon  itself  new  and  higher  forms, 
passing  from  the  simple  ones  of  the  inorganic  world  and  through 
the  complex  ones  of  the  vegetable  world  to  yet  more  complex  ones 
of  the  animal  one,  and  ending  in  man. 

The  more  rapid  the  motion  the  greater  the  tendency  to  changes 
of  form,  to  increase  of  force,  and  increase  of  power  at  the  command 
of  man. 

The  more  simple  the  forms  in  which  matter  exists  the  less  is  the 
power  of  resistance  to  gravitation  ;  the  greater  the  tendency  to 
centralization,  the  less  the  motion,  and  the  less  the  force. 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  89 

The  more  complex  the  form,  the  greater  becomes  the  power  of 
resistance  to  gravitation — the  greater  the  tendency  to  decentraliza 
tion — the  greater  the  motion — and  the  greater  the  force. 

With  every  increase  of  power  on  one  side,  there  is  diminished 
resistance  on  the  other.  The  more  the  motion  produced,  the 
greater  must,  therefore,  be  the  tendency  to  further  increase  of  mo 
tion  and  of  force. 

The  most  complex  and  highly  organized  form  in  which  matter 
exists,  is  that  of  man,  and  here,  alone,  do  we  find  that  capacity  for 
direction  required  for  producing  increase  of  motion  and  of  force. 

Wherever  man  most  exists  we  should,  therefore,  find  the  greatest 
tendency  to  the  decentralization  of  matter — to  increase  of  motion — 
to  further  changes  of  form — and  to  that  higher  development  which 
commences  in  the  vegetable  world,  and  ends  in  the  production  of 
further  supplies  of  men. 

With  every  increase  in  the  extent  to  which  matter  has  taken 
upon  itself  the  form  of  man,  there  should  consequently  be  found  an 
increase  of  his  power  to  guide  and  direct  the  forces  provided  for 
his  use — with  constantly  accelerating  motion,  and  constantly  accele 
rating  changes  of  form — and  constant  increase  in  his  power  to 
command  the  food  and  clothing  required  for  his  support. 

That,  in  the  material  world,  the  resistance  to  gravitation  is  in 
the  direct  ratio  of  organization,  will  be  obvious  to  the  reader  on  a 
moment's  reflection.  Inorganic  matter  rising  in  obedience  to  the 
influence  of  heat,  with  the  slightest  reduction  of  temperature  it 
is  again  condensed,  and  falls  as  rain.  In  the  organic  world,  the 
lower  forms  of  vegetable  life  are  found  in  the  little  plants  that 
return  annually  to  the  dust  from  whence  they  came;  whereas,  the 
higher  ones  are  found  in  the  oak,  that,  for  centuries,  spreads  its 
arms  to  the  wind — famishing,  year  after  year,  leaves,  flowers,  and 
fruits,  despite  the  force  of  gravitation.  In  the  animal  one,  the 
mollusca,  the  coral  insects,  and  the  polypes — standing  lowest  in 
organization — are  most  obedient  to  the  control  of  forces  by  which 
they  are  chained  to  earth;  but  the  obedience  diminishes,  as  we  pass 
upward  to  the  horse,  the  bee,  and  the  bird.  Coming  next  to  man, 
we  find  him  making  his  home  upon  the  living  waters,  or,  at  his 
pleasure,  diving  into  the  recesses  of  the  ocean — at  one  time  circum 
navigating  the  globe,  and  at  another  providing  himself  with  ma- 
7 


90  CHAPTER  III.   §  5. 

chinery,  by  means  of  which  he  is  enabled  to  descend  within  the 
bosom  of  the  great  deep,  and  not  only  to  return  from  thence  him 
self,  but  to  bring  back  with  him,  in  opposition  to  gravitation,  such 
inorganic  matter  as  suits  his  purposes. 

So  is  it  with  the  races  of  men.  The  lower  they  stand  in  moral 
and  physical  condition,  the  greater  is  their  subjection  to  the  cen 
tralizing  forces — and  hence  it  is,  that  in  the  early  stages  of  society, 
when  they  have  little  power  over  nature,  we  see  it  to  have  been  so 
easy  for  the  Attilas  and  Alarics  to  collect  together  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  men,  for  the  purpose  of  robbing  and  murdering  those 
who  chanced  to  be  better  provided  than  themselves  with  worldly 
goods.  Hence,  too,  it  is,  that  we  see  the  great  cities  of  the  world 
exercising  such  strong  attractive  force  upon  those  who  are  disso 
lutely  disposed,  and  those  who  would  live  by  plunder  rather  than 
by  honest  industry. 

The  direct  ratio  between  motion,  force,  and  function,  above 
affirmed  in  regard  to  all  organized  beings,  is  fully  illustrated  in  the 
individual  life  of  man.  From  birth  to  manhood  his  vital  func 
tions — digestion,  circulation,  and  assimilation — being  rapid  and 
vigorous,  greatly  overmatch  the  physical  and  chemical  laws  which 
are  in  direct  antagonism  with  vitality — and  thus  do  they  "make 
increase  of  the  body"  until  the  term  of  development  is  reached. 
The  circulation — the  commerce  of  his  system — which  represents 
all  the  activities  of  assimilation,  ranges  from  130  pulsations  in  a 
minute  to  60,  in  the  ages  of  decline.  The  history  of  his  youth  is 
a  series  of  triumphs  over  the  resistance  of  surrounding  agencies, 
until  his  grand  climacteric  is  attained ;  and  in  all  the  process  of 
emancipation  from  the  dominion  of  the  opposing  forces  of  nature, 
the  rapidity  of  the  motion  within  his  structure  is  the  measure,  and 
the  exponent,  of  his  proper  power,  life,  and  liberty.  When,  however, 
the  scale  begins  to  turn — when  motion  and  its  attendant  sensibility 
begin  to  decline — when  the  conversion  of  digestion,  the  commerce 
of  circulation,  and  the  appropriation  of-  nutrition,  begin  to  abate 
in  celerity  and  force — he  is  beginning  to  die.  Thenceforth,  the 
balance  of  power  against  him  grows  steadily,  while  the  resistance 
of  his  vital  organism  as  steadily  loses  motion  and  force,  until  at 
length  his  frame  is  forced  to  obey  the  laws  of  decomposition  and 
gravitation. 

In  the  material  world,  motion  among  the  atoms  of  matter  is  a 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  91 

consequence  of  physical  heat.  It  is  therefore  greatest  at  the 
equator,  and  it  diminishes  until,  as  we  approach  the  poles,  we 
reach  the  region  of  centralization  and  physical  death. 

In  the  moral  world,  motion  is  a  consequence  of  social  heat — 
motion,  as  has  been  already  shown,  consisting  in  "an  exchange 
of  relations"  resulting  from  the  existence  of  those  differences  that 
develop  social  life.  Motion  is  greatest  in  those  communities  in 
which  agriculture,  manufactures,  and  commerce  are  happily  com 
bined,  and  in  which,  consequently,  society  has  the  highest  organiza 
tion.  It  diminishes,  as  we  approach  the  declining  despotisms  of 
the  East,  the  regions  of  centralization  and  social  death.  It  in 
creases,  as  we  pass  from  the  purely  agricultural  States  of  the  South, 
towards  the  regions  of  more  diversified  industry  in  the  Northern 
and  Eastern  ones,  and  there,  accordingly,  we  find  decentralization 
and  life. 

Centralization,  slavery,  and  death,  travel  hand  in  hand  together 
in  both  the  material  and  the  moral  world. 

§  5.  The  view  thus  presented,  differs  totally  from  that  now  most 
commonly  received,  and  known  as  the  Malthusian  law  of  popula 
tion,  which  may  be  briefly  given  in  tl}e  following  words: — 

Population  tends  to  increase  in  a  geometrical  ratio,  while  the 
supplies  of  food  can  increase  in  an  arithmetical  one  only.  The 
former  is,  therefore,  perpetually  outstripping  the  latter,  and  hence 
it  is,  that  there  is  everywhere  seen  to  arise  the  disease  of  over 
population,  with  its  accompaniments,  poverty,  wretchedness,  and 
death — a  disease  requiring  for  its  remedy  wars,  pestilences,  and 
famines  on  the  one  hand,  or,  on  the  other,  the  exercise  of  that 
"moral  restraint,"  which  shall  induce  men  and  women  to  refrain 
from  matrimony,  and  thus  avoid  the  danger  resulting  from  further 
addition  to  the  numbers  requiring  to  be  fed.  Reduced  to  distinct 
propositions,  the  theory  may  now  be  given  as  follows : — 

1.  Matter  tends  to  take  upon  itself  higher  forms,  passing  from 
the  simple  ones  of  inorganic  life   to  the  complex  and  beautiful 
ones  of  vegetable  and  animal  life,  and  finally  terminating  in  man. 

2.  This  tendency  exists  in  a  small  degree  as  relates  to  the  lower 
forms  of  life — matter  tending  to  take  upon  itself  the  forms  of  po 
tatoes,  turnips,  and  cabbages,  herrings,  and  oysters,  in  an  arith 
metical  ratio  only. 


92  CHAPTER  III.  §  5. 

3.  When,  however,  we  reach  the  highest  of  all  the  forms  of 
which  matter  is  capable,  we  find  the  tendency  to  assume  that  form 
augmenting  in  a  geometrical  ratio;  as  a  consequence  of  which, 
while  man  tends  to  increase  as  1,  2,  4,  8,  16,  and  32 — the  potatoes 
and  cabbages,  the  peas  and  turnips,  the  herrings  and  the  oysters, 
increase  as  1,  2,  3  and  4  only — producing  the  result  that  the  high 
est  form  is  perpetually  outstripping  the  lower  ones,  and  causing  the 
disease  of  over-population. 

Were  such  things  asserted  in  regard  to  anything  else  than  man, 
they  would  be  deemed  in  the  highest  degree  absurd,  and  those  by 
whom  they  were  asserted,  would  be  required  to  explain  why  it  was, 
that  an  universal  law  had  here  been  set  aside.  Everywhere  else, 
the  increase  in  number  is  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  deveiopmentr  The 
little  coral  insects  are  required,  in  quantity  innumerable,  to  build 
up  islands,  for  animals  and  men  that  count  by  thousands,  or  by 
millions.  Of  the  clio  boreatis,  thousands  are  required  to  furnish  a 
mouthful  for  the  mighty  whale.  The  progeny  of  a  pair  of  carp 
would,  in  a  single  decade,  as  we  are  told,  amount  to  millions.  The 
countless  ferns  prepare  the  soil  for  the  single  oak;  and  the  progeny 
of  a  pair  of  rabbits  would,  in  twenty  years,  count  by  millions — 
whereas,  that  of  a  pair  of  elephants,  would  not  amount  to  dozens. 
When,  however,  we  reach  the  highest  condition  of  which  matter  is 
capable,  we  learn  the  existence  of  a  new  and  greater  law,  in  virtue 
of  which  man  increases  in  a  geometrical  ratio,  while  the  increase 
of  herrings,  rabbits,  oysters,  potatoes,  turnips,  and  all  other  com 
modities  required  for  his  use,  is  limited  to  the  arithmetical  one! 
Such  is  the  extraordinary  law  propounded  by  Mr.  Malthus,  as  ex 
isting  in  reference  to  the  only  being  on  whom  has  been  impressed 
the  desire  for  association,  as  necessary  for  compliance  with  the  sole 
condition  of  his  existence;  the  only  one,  to  whom  has  been  given 
an  infinite  variety  of  capacities  fitting  him  for  association  with  his 
fellow  men,  and  requiring  it  for  their  development;  and  the  only 
one,  too,  that — having  been  gifted  with  the  power  to  distinguish 
right  from  wrong,  and  thus  been  made  responsible  for  his  actions — 
might  with  reason  have  required,  that  he  should  be  exempt  from 
any  law  requiring  him  to  make  his  election  between  abstinence  from 
that  association  which,  of  all  others,  tends  most  to  the  improve 
ment  of  his  head  and  heart,  on  one  hand,  and  starvation  on  the 
other.  Such,  however,  according  to  the  generally  received  doctrines 


OF  INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBERS  OF  MANKIND.  93 

of  modern  political  economy,  is  the  law  of  population  instituted  by 
an  all-wise,  all-powerful,  and  all-benevolent  Creator,  in  reference 
to  the  being  made  in  his  own  likeness,  and  gifted  with  power  to 
control  and  direct  all  the  forces  of  nature  to  his  use — and,  strange 
as  it  appears,  no  proposition  ever  offered  for  consideration  has  ex 
ercised,  or  is  now  exercising,  upon  the  fortunes  of  the  human  race 
a  greater  amount  of  influence.  That  such  should  have  been  the 
case  has,  in  part,  resulted  from  the  fact  that  it  has  been  buttressed 
up  by  another  one,  in  virtue  of  which  man  is  supposed  everywhere 
to  have  commenced  the  work  of  cultivation  on  rich  soils — neces 
sarily  those  of  swamps  and  river  bottoms — with  large  return  to 
labor ;  and  to  have  found  himself  compelled,  with  the  growth  of 
population  and  of  wealth,  to  have  recourse  to  poorer  ones,  with 
constant  decline  in  the  return  to  all  his  efforts — a  theory  that,  if 
true,  would  fully  establish  the  correctness  of  that  of  Mr  Malthus. 
What  are  its  claims  to  being  received  as  true,  will  now  be  shown. 


94  CHAPTER  IV.  §  1. 


CHAPTER    IY. 

OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH. 

§  1.  LOOK  where  we  may,  we  see  man  to  have  commenced  his 
career  as  a  hunter,  subsisting  upon  the  spoils  of  the  chase,  and 
dependent  entirely  upon  the  voluntary  contributions  of  the  earth  ; 
and  thus  to  have  everywhere  been  the  slave  of  nature.  Later,  we 
find  him  in  the  shepherd  state,  surrounded  by  animals  that  he  has 
tamed,  and  upon  whom  he  is  dependent  for  supplies  of  food,  while 
deriving  from  them  the  skins  by  which  he  is  protected  from  the 
winter's  cold. 

In  this  state  of  things  there  can  exist  but  little  power  of  asso 
ciation,  eight  hundred  acres  of  land  being  estimated  to  be  required 
for  enabling  a  hunter  to  obtain  as  much  food  as  could  be  obtained 
from  half  an  acre  under  cultivation.  "Why  this  is  so  is  thus  ex 
plained  by  Liebig  : — 

"A  nation  of  hunters  on  a  limited  space  is  utterly  incapable  of  in 
creasing  its  numbers  beyond  a  certain  point,  which  is  soon  attained. 
The  carbon  necessary  for  respiration  must  be  obtained  from  the 
animals,  of  which  only  a  limited  number  can  live  on  the  space 
supposed.  These  animals  collect  from  plants  the  constituents  of 
their  organs  and  their  blood,  and  yield  them  in  turn  to  the  savages 
who  live  by  the  chase  alone.  They  again  receive  this  food,  unac 
companied  by  those  compounds  destitute  of  nitrogen,  which,  during 
the  life  of  the  animals,  served  to  support  the  respiratory  process. 
In  such  men,  confined  to  an  animal  diet,  it  is  the  carbon  of  the 
flesh  and  of  the  blood  which  must  take  the  place  of  starch  and 
sugar.  But  fifteen  pounds  of  flesh  contain  no  more  carbon  than 
four  pounds  of  starch  ;  and  while  the  savage,  with  one  animal  and 
an  equal  weight  of  starch,  could  maintain  life  and  health  for  a  cer 
tain  number  of  days,  he  would  be  compelled,  if  confined  to  flesh, 
in  order  to  procure  the  carbon  necessary  for  respiration  during  the 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  95 

same  time,  to  consume  five  such  animals." — Animal  Chemistry, 
Part  I,  §  14. 

That  the  power  of  association  may  increase,  it  is,  then,  indis 
pensable  that  man  should  be  enabled  to  obtain  increased  supplies 
of  vegetable  food,  and  they  can  be  obtained  only  by  the  help  of 
cultivation.  That,  however,  implies  an  approach  to  individuality 
which,  in  such  cases,  can  have  no  existence.  The  lands  are  common 
stock,  and  so  are  the  flocks ;  and  when,  by  reason  of  any  failure  of 
supplies,  it  becomes  necessary  to  effect  a  change  of  place,  the  tribe 
moves  bodily,  as  is  seen  to  have  been  the  case  with  those  of 
Asia  and  of  the  north  of  Europe — and  as  it  is  now  with  those  of 
the  Western  Continent.  Under  such  circumstances,  there  can  be 
no  approach  to  that  individuality  which  consists  in  the  power  of 
determining  for  themselves,  whether  they  will  go  or  remain  where 
they  are.  If  the  majority  determine  to  remove,  all  must  do  so,  for 
the  few  who  might  remain  would  be  butchered  by  other  tribes, 
greedy  for  additions  to  the  territory  over  which  they  had  been 
accustomed  to  roam,  and  from  which  they  had  derived  but  a  mise 
rable  subsistence.  In  this  stage  of  society,  man  is,  therefore,  not 
only  the  slave  of  nature,  but  also  of  his  neighbor  men,  bound  to 
yield  to  the  tyranny  of  the  majority. 

Absence  of  power  in  the  individual  man,  to  determine  his  own 
course  of  action — or,  in  that  of  a  minority  to  judge  and  act 
for  themselves — is  thus  a  necessary  consequence  of  inability  to  call 
to  their  aid  the  natural  forces  by  which  they  are  everywhere  sur 
rounded,  and  by  whose  aid  larger  supplies  of  food  might  be  ob 
tained  from  diminished  surfaces — enabling  them  to  live  in  closer 
connection  with  each  other.  In  what  manner,  however,  can  the 
hunter  or  the  shepherd  compel  nature  to  work  for  him  ?  "  His 
implements  are  of  the  rudest  description,  such  as  nature  offers 
ready-made  to  his  hand,  like  the  shell  that  the  South  Sea  Islanders 
use  for  a  hoe.  All  the  arms  and  tools  that  his  forefathers  had  used, 
while  the  tribe  was  passing  through  its  stages  of  hunter  and  shep 
herd  life,  were  of  this  description.  A  flint  had  served  for  an  arrow 
head,  and  its  sharp  edge  gave  the  only  cutting  instrument  they  had 
been  able  to  construct.  A  bow  fashioned  by  such  a  knife,  the  string 
of  which  was  a  thong  cut  from  a  deer-skin,  was  his  chief  weapon 
for  the  chase,  or  for  combat  at  a  distance — a  club  hardened  by  the 
fire,  armed  sometimes  with  a  sharp  stone,  fastened  to  it  by  thongs, 


96  CHAPTER  IV.   §  1. 

was  the  weapon  for  close  strife.  A  pointed  bone,  from  the  leg  of 
the  deer,  furnished  his  wife  with  a  needle,  and  its  sinews  with  the 
thread,  by  which  she  sewed  together  the  skins  that  clothed  her 
household.  It  is  with  such  tools  only  that  experience  or  the  tra 
ditions  of  his  tribe  have  made  him  acquainted.  One  has  but  to 
walk  into  the  nearest  museum  that  contains  a  collection  of  savage 
implements,  to  see  how  imperfect  they  are,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
to  observe  with  some  astonishment  how  fully  they  meet  the  limited 
wants  of  those  who  use  them,  and  through  what  a  long  tract  of 
time  generations  of  men  made  no  sensible  improvement  upon  their 
primitive  stock."* 

What,  under  such  circumstance,  is  his  course  of  operation,  is 
exhibited  in  the  following  sketch  of  that  of  a  single  supposed  indi 
vidual  and  his  descendants,  during  a  period  of  time  that  the  reader 
may,  if  he  will,  extend  from  years  to  centuries.  By  thus  taking  a 
supposititious  case,  and  placing  the  settler  on  an  island,  we  are 
enabled  to  eliminate  the  causes  of  disturbance  that  have,  every 
where  in  real  life,  resulted  from  the  vicinity  of  other  individuals 
equally  deficient  in  the  machinery  required  for  the  subjugation  of 
nature — and  therefore  driven,  by  fear  of  starvation,  to  robbery  and 
murder  of  their  fellow-men.  Having  thus,  by  aid  of  the  system 
pursued  by  the  mathematician,  studied  what  would  be  the  course  of 
man  left  undisturbed,  we  shall  then  be  prepared  to  enter  into  an 
examination  of  the  disturbing  causes  to  which  it  is  due  that  his 
course  has  been,  in  many  countries,  so  widely  different. 

The  first  cultivator,  the  Robinson  Crusoe  of  his  day,  provided, 
however,  with  a  wife,  has  neither  axe  nor  spade.  He  works  alone. 
Population  being  small,  land  is,  of  course,  abundant,  and  he  may 
select  for  himself,  fearless  of  any  question  of  his  title.  He  is  sur 
rounded  by  soils  possessed  in  the  highest  degree  of  qualities  fitting 
them  for  yielding  large  returns  to  labor;  but  they  are  covered  with 
immense  trees  that  he  cannot  fell,  or  they  are  swamps  that  he  can 
not  drain.  To  pass  through  them,  even,  is  a  work  of  serious  labor, 
the  first  being  a  mass  of  roots,  stumps,  decaying  logs,  and  shrubs, 
while,  into  the  other,  he  sinks  knee  deep  at  every  step.  The  atmo 
sphere,  too,  is  impure,  as  fogs  settle  upon  the  lowlands,  and  the 
dense  foliage  of  the  wood  prevents  the  circulation  of  the  air.  He 

*  Smith's  Manual  of  Political  Econemy,  p.  43. 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  91 

has  no  axe,  but  had  he  one  he  would  not  venture  there,  for,  to  do 
so,  would  be  attended  with  risk  of  health,  and  almost  certain  loss 
of  life.  Yegetation,  too,  is  so  luxuriant,  that  before  he  could, 
with  the  imperfect  machinery  at  his  command,  clear  a  single  acre, 
a  portion  of  it  would  be  again  so  overgrown  that  he  would  have 
to  recommence  his  Sisyphean  labor.  The  higher  lands,  compara 
tively  bare  of  timber,  are  little  fitted  for  yielding  a  return  to  his 
exertions.  There  are,  however,  places  on  the  hill,  where  the  thin 
ness  of  the  soil  has  prevented  the  growth  of  trees  and  shrubs — or 
there  are  spaces  among  the  trees  that  can  be  cultivated  while  they 
still  remain  ;  and,  when  pulling  up  by  the  roots  the  few  shrubs  scat 
tered  over  the  surface,  he  is  alarmed  by  no  apprehension  of  their 
speedy  reproduction.  With  his  hands  he  may  even  succeed  in 
barking  the  trees,  or,  by  the  aid  of  fire  he  may  so  far  destroy  them 
that  time  alone  will  be  required  for  giving  him  a  few  cleared  acres, 
upon  which  to  sow  his  seed,  with  little  fear  of  weeds.  To  attempt 
these  things  upon  the  richer  lands  would  be  loss  of  labor.  In  some 
places  the  ground  is  always  wet,  while  in  others,  the  trees  are  too 
large  to  be  seriously  injured  by  fire,  and  its  only  effect  would  be  to 
stimulate  the  growth  of  weeds  and  brush.  He  therefore  commences 
the  work  of  cultivation  on  the  higher  grounds,  where,  making  with 
his  stick  holes  in  the  light  soil  that  drains  itself,  he  drops  the  grain 
an  inch  or  two  below  the  surface,  and  in  due  season  obtains  a  return 
of  twice  his  seed.  Pounding  this  between  stones,  he  obtains  bread, 
and  his  condition  is  improved.  He  has  succeeded  in  making  the 
earth  labor  for  him,  while  himself  engaged  in  trapping  birds  or 
rabbits,  or  in  gathering  fruits. 

Later,  he  succeeds  in  sharpening  a  stone,  and  thus  obtains  a 
hatchet,  by  aid  of  which  he  is  enabled  to  proceed  more  rapidly 
in  girdling  the  trees,  and  in  removing  the  sprouts  and  their  roots, 
a  very  slow  and  laborious  operation,  nevertheless.  In  process  of 
time,  he  is  seen  bringing  into  activity  a  new  soil — one  whose  food- 
producing  powers  were  less  obvious  to  sight  than  those  at  first  at 
tempted.  Finding  an  ore  of  copper,  he  succeeds  in  burning  it,  and 
is  thus  enabled  to  obtain  a  better  axe,  with  far  less  labor  than  had 
been  required  for  the  inferior  one  he  has  thus  far  used.  He  obtains, 
also,  something  like  a  spade,  and  can  now  make  holes  four  inches 
deep,  with  less  labor  than,  with  his  stick,  he  could  make  those  of  two. 
Penetrating  to  a  lower  soil,  and  being  enabled  to  stir  the  earth  and 


98  CHAPTER  IV.  §  1. 

loosen  it,  the  rain  is  now  absorbed  where  before  it  had  run  off  from 
the  hard  surface,  and  the  new  soil  thus  obtained  proves  to  be  far 
better,  and  more  easily  wrought,  than  that  upon  which  his  labor 
has  heretofore  been  wasted.  His  seed,  better  protected,  is  less 
liable  to  be  frozen  out  in  winter,  or  parched  in  summer,  and  he 
now  gathers  thrice  the  quantity  sown.  At  the  next  step,  we  find 
him  bringing  into  action  another  new  soil.  He  has  found  that 
which,  on  burning,  yields  him  tin,  and,  by  combining  this  with  his 
copper,  he  has  brass,  giving  him  better  machinery,  and  enabling 
him  to  proceed  more  rapidly.  While  sinking  deeper  into  the  land 
first  occupied,  he  is  enabled  to  clear  other  lands  upon  which  vege 
tation  grows  more  luxuriantly,  because  he  can  now  exterminate 
the  shrubs  with  some  hope  of  occupying  the  land  before  they  are 
replaced  with  others  equally  useless  for  his  purposes.  His  children, 
too,  have  grown,  and  they  can  weed  the  ground, \  and  otherwise 
assist  him  in  removing  the  obstacles  by  which  his  progress  is  im 
peded.  He  now  profits  by  association  and  combination  of  action, 
as  before  he  had  profited  by  the  pow.er  he  had  obtained  over  the 
various  natural  forces  he  had  reduced  into  his  service.  Xext,  we 
find  him  burning  a  piece  of  the  iron  soil  which  surrounds  him  in 
all  directions,  and  now  he  obtains  a  real  axe  and  spade,  inferior  in 
quality,  but  still  much  superior  to  those  by  which  his  labor  has 
been  thus  far  aided.  With  the  help  of  his  sons,  grown  to  man's 
estate,  he  now  removes  the  light  pine  of  the  hill-side  leaving  still 
untouched,  however,  the  heavy  timber  of  the  river  bottom.  His 
cultivable  ground  is  increased  in  extent,  while  he  is  enabled,  with 
his  spade,  to  penetrate  still  deeper  than  before,  thus  bringing  into 
action  the  powers  of  the  soils  more  distant  from  the  surface.  He 
finds,  with  great  pleasure,  that  the  light  sand  is  underlaid  with  clay, 
and  that,  by  combining  the  two,  he  obtains  a  new  one  far  more 
productive  than  that  he  first  had  used.  He  remarks,  too,  that  by 
turning  the  surface  down,  the  process  of  decomposition  is  facilitated, 
and  each  addition  to  his  knowledge  increases  the  return  to  his 
exertions. — With  further  increase  of  his  family,  he  has  obtained 
the  important  advantage  of  increased  combination  of  action. 
Things  that  were  needed  to  be  done  to  render  his  land  more 
rapidly  productive,  but  which  were  to  himself  impracticable, 
become  simple  and  easy  when  now  attempted  by  his  numerous 
sons  and  grandsons,  each  of  whom  obtains  far  more  food  than  he 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  99 

alone  could  at  first  command,  and  in  return  for  far  less  severe  ex 
ertion.  They  next  extend  their  operations  downwards,  towards 
the  low  grounds  of  the  stream,  girdling  the  large  trees,  and  burn 
ing  the  brush — and  thus  facilitating  the  passage  of  air  so  as  to  fit 
the  land,  by  degrees,  for  occupation. 

With  increase  of  numbers  there  is  now  increased  power  of  asso 
ciation,  manifested  by  increased  division  of  employments,  and 
attended  with  augmented  power  to  command  the  service  of  the 
great  natural  agents  provided  for  their  use.  One  portion  of  the 
little  community  now  performs  all  the  labors  of  the  field,  while 
another  gives  itself  to  the  further  development  of  the  mineral  wealth 
by  which  it  is  everywhere  surrounded.  They  invent  a  hoe,  by  means 
of  which  the  children  are  enabled  to  free  the  ground  from  weeds, 
and  to  tear  up  some  of  the  roots  by  which  the  best  lands — those  last 
brought  into  cultivation — are  yet  infested.  They  have  succeeded 
in  taming  the  ox,  but,  as  yet,  have  had  little  occasion  for  his  services. 
They  now  invent  the  plough,  and,  by  means  of  a  piece  of  twisted  hide, 
are  enabled  to  attach  the  ox,  by  whose  help  they  turn  up  a  deeper 
soil,  while  extendmg  cultivation  over  more  distant  land.  The  commu 
nity  grows,  and  with  it  grows  the  wealth  of  the  individuals  of  which 
it  is  composed,  enabling  them,  from  year  to  year,  to  obtain  better 
machinery,  and  to  reduce  to  cultivation  more  and  better  lands. . 
Food  and  clothing  become  more  abundant,  while  the  air  on  the 
lower  lands  is  improved  by  the  clearing  of  the  timber.  The  dwell 
ing,  too,  is  better.  In  the  outset,  it  was  a  hole  in  the  ground. 
Subsequently,  it  was  composed  of  such  decayed  logs  as  the  un 
aided  efforts  of  the  first  settler  could  succeed  in  rolling  and  placing 
one  upon  the  other.  As  yet,  the  chimney  was  unknown,  and  he 
must  live  in  perpetual  smoke,  if  he  would  not  perish  of  cold,  as  a 
window  was  a  luxury  then  unthought  of.  If  the  severity  of  the 
weather  required  him  to  close  his  doors,  he  was  not  only  stifled, 
but  passed  his  days  in  darkness.  His  time,  during  a  large  portion 
of  the  year,  was  therefore  totally  unproductive,  while  his  life  was 
liable  to  be  shortened  by  disease  produced  by  foul  air  within,  or 
severe  cold  without,  his  miserable  hut.  With  increase  of  popula 
tion  all  have  acquired  wealth,  resulting  from  the  cultivation  of  new 
and  better  soils,  and  from  a  growing  power  to  command  the  ser 
vices  of  nature.  With  this  increase  of  power  there  has  been  a 
further  increase  in  the  power  of  association,  with  steady  tendency 


100  CHAPTER  IV.  §  1. 

to  the  development  of  individuality,  as  the  modes  of  employment 
have  become  more  and  more  diversified.  They  now  fell  the  heavy 
oak  and  the  enormous  pine,  and  are  thereby  enabled  to  construct 
additional  dwellings,  each  in  regular  succession  better  than  the 
first.  Health  improves,  and  population  increases  more  rapidly. 
A  part  of  it  is  now  employed  in  the  field,  while  another  prepares 
the  skins,  and  renders  them  more  fit  for  clothing — and  a  third  set 
makes  axes,  spades,  hoes,  ploughs,  and  other  implements  calculated 
to  aid  the  labors  of  the  field,  and  in  those  of  construction.  The 
supply  of  food  increases  rapidly,  and  with  it  the  power  of  accumu 
lation.  In  the  first  years,  there  was  perpetual  danger  of  famine, 
but  now  there  being  a  surplus,  a  part  is  stored  to  provide  against 
failure  of  the  crops. 

Cultivation  extends  itself  along  the  hill-side,  where  deeper  soils, 
now  laid  open  by  the  plough,  yield  larger  returns — while  down  the 
slope  of  the  hill  each  successive  year  is  marked  by  the  disappear 
ance  of  the  great  trees  by  which  the  .richer  lands  have  heretofore 
been  occupied — the  intermediate  spaces  becoming  meanwhile  en 
riched  by  the  decomposition  of  the  enormous  *roots,  and  more 
readily  ploughed  because  of  the  gradual  decay  of  the  stumps.  A 
single  ox  to  the  plough  can  now  turn  up  a  greater  space  than  in 
the  outset  could  be  done  by  two.  A  single  ploughman  can  now 
do  more  than  on  the  ground  first  cultivated  could  have  been  done 
by  hundreds  of  men  armed  with  pointed  sticks.  The  community 
being  next  enabled  to  drain  some  of  the  lower  lands,  copious  har 
vests  of  grain  are  obtained  frqm  the  better  soil  now  first  cultivated. 
Thus  far  the  oxen  have  roamed  the  woods,  gathering  what  they 
could,  but  the  meadow  is  now  granted  to  their  use,  the  axe  and 
the  saw  enabling  the  family  to  enclose  them,  and  thus  to  lessen 
the  labor  attendant  upon  obtaining  supplies  of  meat,  milk,  butter, 
and  hides.  Heretofore  their  chief  domestic  animal  has  been  the 
hog,  which  could  live  on  mast,  but  now  they  add  beef,  and  perhaps 
mutton,  the  lands  first  cultivated  being  abandoned  to  the  sheep. 
They  obtain  far  more  meat  and  grain,  and  with  less  labor  than  at 
any  former  period ;  a  consequence  of  their  increase  in  numbers  and 
in  the  power  of  association.  Numerous  generations  having  already 
passed  away,  the  younger  ones  now  profit  by  the  wealth  they 
had  accumulated,  and  are  thus  enabled  to  apply  their  own  labor 
with  daily  increasing  advantage — obtaining  a  constantly  increas- 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OP  THE  EARTH.  101 

ing  return,  with  increasing  power  of  accumulation,  and  decreasing 
severity  of  exertion.  They  now  bring  new  powers  to  their  aid, 
and  the  water  no  longer  is  allowed  to  run  to  waste.  Even  the 
air  itself  is  made  to  work,  windmills  grinding  the  grain,  and  saw 
mills  cutting  the  timber,  which  disappears  more  rapidly ;  while  the 
work  of  drainage  is  in  course  of  being  improved  by  help  of  more 
efficient  spades  and  ploughs.  The  little  furnace  makes  its  appear 
ance,  and  charcoal  being  now  applied  to  the  reduction  of  the 
iron  yielding  soil,  it  is  found  that  the  labor  of  a  single  day 
becomes  more  productive  than  before  had  been  that  of  many  weeks. 
Population  spreads  itself  along  the  faces  of  the  hills  and  down  into 
the  lower  lands,  becoming  more  and  more  dense  at  the  seat  of  the 
original  settlement ;  and  with  every  step  we  find  increasing  tendency 
to  combination  of  action  for  the  production  of  food,  the  manufac 
ture  of  clothing  and  of  household  utensils,  the  construction  of 
houses,  and  the  preparation  of  machinery  for  aiding  in  all  these 
operations.  The  heaviest  timber — that  growing  on  the  most  fer 
tile  land — now  disappears,  and  deep  marshes  are  now  drained. 
Roads  are  next  made  to  facilitate  the  intercourse  between  the  old 
settlement  and  the  newer  ones  that  have  been  formed  around  it,  and 
to  enable  the  grower  of  corn  to  exchange  for  wool,  or  perhaps  for 
improved  spades  or  ploughs,  for  clothing  or  for  furniture. 

Population  again  increases,  with  still  further  development  of 
wealth  and  power,  and  therewith  is  acquired  leisure  for  reflection 
on  the  results  furnished  by  the  experience  of  themselves  and  their 
predecessors.  From  day  to  day,  mind  becomes  more  stimulated 
into  action.  The  sand  in  the  neighborhood  being  found  to  be 
underlaid  with  marl,  the  two  are,  by  aid  of  the  improved  ma 
chinery  now  in  use,  brought  into  combination  ;  thereby  produc 
ing  a  soil  of  power  far  exceeding  that  of  those  heretofore  in  culti 
vation.  With  increased  returns  to  labor  all  are  better  fed,  clothed, 
and  housed,  and  all  are  incited  to  new  exertions,  while  with  im 
proved  health  and  with  the  power  of  working  in-doors  and  out-of- 
doors,  according  to  the  season,  they  are  enabled  to  apply  their 
labor  with  greater  steadiness  and  regularity.  Thus  far,  however, 
they  have  found  it  difficult  to  gather  their  crops  in  season.  The 
harvest  time  being  short,  the  whole  strength  of  the  community  has 
been  found  insufficient  to  prevent  much  of  the  grain  remaining  on 
the  ground  until,  over  ripe,  it  was  shaken  out  by  the  wind,  or  in 


102  CHAPTER  IV.  §  1 

the  attempt  to  gather  it.  Not  unfrequently,  indeed,  it  has  been 
totally  ruined  by  changes  of  weather  after  it  had  been  fit  for  har 
vesting.  Labor  has  been  superabundant  during  the  year,  while 
harvest  produced  a  demand  for  it  that  could  not  be  supplied.  The 
reaping-hook,  however,  now  takes  the  place  of  the  hand,  while  the 
scythe  enables  the  farmer  to  cut  his  hay.  The  cradle  and  the 
horse-rake  follow,  all  tending  to  increase  the  facility  of  accumula 
tion,  and  thus  to  increase  the  power  of  applying  labor  to  new  soils, 
deeper  or  more  distant,  more  heavily  burdened  with  timber,  or 
more  liable  to  be  flooded — and  thus  requiring  embankment  as  well 
as  drainage.  New  combinations,  too,  are  formed.  The  clay  is 
found  to  be  underlaid  with  the  soil  called  lime,  which  latter,  like 
the  iron  yielding  soil,  requires  decomposition  to  fit  it  for  the  task 
of  combination.  The  road,  the  wagon,  and  the  horse  facilitate 
the  work  by  enabling  the  farmer  readily  to  obtain  supplies  of  the 
carbon-yielding  soil,  called  coal,  and  he  now  obtains,  by  burning 
the  lime  and  combining  it  with  the  clay,  a  better  soil  than  at  any 
former  period — one  yielding  more  corn,  and  requiring  less  severe 
labor  from  himself.  Population  and  wealth  again  increase,  and 
the  steam-engine  assists  the  work  of  drainage,  while  the  railroad 
and  the  engine  facilitate  the  transportation  to  market  of  his  pro 
ducts.  His  cattle  being  now  fattened  at  home,  a  large  portion 
of  the  produce  of  his  rich  meadow-land  is  converted  into  manure, 
to  be  applied  to  the  poorer  soils  that  had  at  first  been  cultivated. 
Instead  of  sending  food  to  fatten  them  at  market,  he  now  obtains 
from  market  their  refuse  in  the  form  of  bones,  by  help  of  which  to 
maintain  the  powers  of  his  land. — Passing  thus,  at  every  step, 
from  the  poor  to  the  better  soils,  there  is  obtained  a  constantly 
increasing  supply  of  food,  and  other  necessaries  of  life,  with 
corresponding  increase  in  the  power  of  consumption  and  accumu 
lation.  The  danger  of  famine  and  disease  now  passes  away. 
Increased  returns  to  labor  and  daily  improving  condition  render 
ing  labor  pleasant,  he  is  seen  everywhere  applying  himself  more 
steadily  as  his  work  becomes  less  severe.  Population  further 
increases,  and  the  rapidity  of  its  increase  is  seen  to  be  greater 
with  each  successive  generation — while  with  each  is  seen  an  in 
crease  of  the  power  of  living  in  connection  with  each  other,  by 
reason  of  the  power  of  obtaining  constantly  increasing  supplies 
from  the  same  surface.  With  every  step  in  this  direction  the 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  103 

desire  for  association  and  for  combination  of  action  is  seen  to 
grow  with  the  growth  of  the  power  to  satisfy  it,  and  thus  are  their 
labors  rendered  more  productive  and  the  facilities  of  commerce 
augmented — with  constant  tendency  to  the  production  of  har 
mony,  peace,  and  security  of  person  and  property,  among  them 
selves,  and  with  the  world — accompanied  by  constant  increase  of 
numbers,  wealth,  prosperity,  and  happiness. 

Such  has  been  everywhere,  where  population  and  wealth  have 
been  permitted  to  increase,  the  history  of  man.  With  growth  of 
numbers  there  has  been  increased  power  of  combination  among 
men  for  obtaining  control  over  the  great  forces  existing  in  nature — 
setting  them  free  and  then  compelling  them  to  aid  him  in  the  work 
of  producing  the  food,  the  clothing,  and  the  shelter  required  for 
his  purposes,  and  to  facilitate  him  in  obtaining  power  to  extend 
the  sphere  of  his  associations.  Everywhere  he  is  seen  to  have 
commenced  poor  and  helpless  in  himself,  and  unable  to  combine 
his  efforts  with  those  of  his  fellow-men — and  everywhere,  conse 
quently,  the  slave  of  nature.  Everywhere,  as  numbers  have  in 
creased,  he  is  seen  to  have  become,  from  year  to  year,  and  from 
century  to  century,  more  and  more  her  master — and  every  step  in 
that  direction  has  been  marked  by  rapid  development  of  individu 
ality,  attended  by  increased  power  of  association,  increased  sense 
of  responsibility,  and  increased  power  of  progress. 

That  such  has  been  the  case  with  all  nations  and  in  all  parts  of 
the  earth,  is  so  obvious  that  it  would  seem  almost  unnecessary  to 
offer  any  proof  of  the  fact,  nor  could  it  be  so  but  that  it  has  been 
asserted  that  the  course  of  things  has  been  directly  the  reverse — 
that  man  has  always  commenced  the  work  of  cultivation  on  the 
rich  soils  of  the  earth,  and  that  then  food  has  been  abundant — but 
that,  as  population  has  increased,  his  successors  have  found  them 
selves  forced  to  resort  to  inferior  ones,  yielding  steadily  less  and 
less  in  return  to  labor  ;  with  constant  tendency  to  over-population, 
poverty,  wretchedness,  and  death.  Were  this  so,  there  could  be 
no  such  thing  as  universality  in  the  natural  laws  to  which  man  is 
subjected,  for  in  regard  to  all  other  descriptions  of  matter,  we  see 
him  uniformly  commencing  with  the  inferior,  and  passing,  as  wealth 
and  population  grow,  to  the  superior — with  constantly  increasing 
return  to  labor.  He  is  seen  to  have  commenced  with  the  axe  of 
stone,  and  to  have  passed  through  those  of  copper,  bronze,  and 


104  CHAPTER  IV.  §  2. 

iron,  until  he  has  finally  arrived  at  those  of  steel — to  have  passed 
from  the  spindle  and  distaff  to  the  spinning-jenny  and  the  power- 
loom — from  the  canoe  to  the  ship — from  transportation  on  the 
backs  of  men  to  that  in  railroad  cars — from  rude  hieroglyphics 
painted  on  skins  to  the  printed  book — and  from  the  wild  society 
of  the  savage  tribe,  where  might  makes  right,  to  the  organized 
community  in  which  the  rights  of  those  who  are  weak  in  numbers, 
or  in  muscular  power,  are  respected.  Having  studied  these  facts, 
and  having  satisfied  ourselves  that  such  has  been  his  course  in  re 
ference  to  all  things  other  than  the  land  required  for  cultivation, 
we  should  be  disposed  to  believe  that  it  must  there  also  prove  to 
have  been  the  case,  and  that  the  theory  referred  to — by  virtue  of 
which  man  is  rendered  more  and  more  the  slave  of  nature  as  wealth 
and  population  grow — must  be  untrue. 

§  2.  Forty  years  have  now  elapsed  since  Mr.  Ricardo  communi 
cated  to  the  world  his  discovery  of  the  nature  and  causes  of  rent, 
and  of  the  laws  of  its  progress,*  and  during  nearly  all  that  time  it 

*  The  theory  is  thus  stated  by  its  author : — 

"  On  the  first  settling  of  a  country  in  which  there  is  an  abundance  of 
rich  and  fertile  land,  a  very  small  portion  of  which  is  required  to  be  culti 
vated  for  the  support  of  the  actual  population,  or,  indeed,  can  be  cultivated 
with  the  capital  which  the  population  can  command,  there  will  be  no  rent; 
for  110  one  would  pay  for  the  use  of  land  when  there  was  an  abundant 
quantity  not  yet  appropriated,  and,  therefore,  at  the  disposal  of  whom 
soever  might  choose  to  cultivate  it.  *  *  *  *  *  If  all  land  had  the 
same  properties,  if  it  were  boundless  in  quantity  and  uniform  in  quality, 
no  charge  could  be  made  for  its  use,  unless  where  it  possessed  peculiar  ad 
vantages  of  situation.  It  is  only,  then,  because  land  is  not  unlimited  in 
quantity  and  uniform  in  quality,  and  because,  in  the  progress  of  popula 
tion  land  of  an  inferior  quality,  or  less  advantageously  situated,  is  called 
into  cultivation,  that  rent  is  ever  paid  for  the  use  of  it.  When,  in  the 
progress  of  society,  land  of  the  second  degree  of  fertility  is  taken  into 
cultivation,  rent  immediately  commences  on  that  of  the  first  quality;  and 
the  amount  of  that  rent  will  depend  on  the  difference  in  the  quality  of 
these  two  portions  of  land.  *  *  *  When  land  of  the  third  quality  is 
taken  into  cultivation,  rent  immediately  commences  on  the  second ;  and  it 
is  regulated  as  before  by  the  difference  in  their  productive  powers.  At  the 
same  time  the  rent  of  the  first  quality  will  rise,  for  that  must  always  be 
above  the  rent  of  the  second,  by  the  difference  between  the  produce  which 
they  yield  with  a  given  quantity  of  capital  and  labor. 

"  The  most  fertile  and  most  favorably  situated  land  will  be  first  culti 
vated,  and  the  exchangeable  value  of  its  produce  will  be  adjusted  in  the 
same  manner  as  the  exchangeable  value  of  all  other  commodities,  by  the 
total  quantity  of  labor  necessary  in  various  forms,  from  first  to  last,  to  pro 
duce  it  and  bring  it  to  market.  When  land  of  inferior  quality  is  taken 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OP  THE  EARTH.  105 

has  been  received  by  a  large  portion  of  the  economists  of  Europe 
and  America,  as  being  so  unquestionably  true,  that  doubt  of  its 
truth  could  be  regarded  only  as  evidence  of  incapacity  to  com 
prehend  it.  Furnishing,  as  it  did,  a  simple  and  easy  explanation 
of  the  poverty  existing  in  the  world — and  by  help  of  a  law  ema 
nating  from  an  all-wise,  all-powerful,  and  all-beneficent  Creator — 
it  relieved  the  governing  classes  from  all  responsibility  for  the 
wretchedness  with  which  they  were  surrounded,  and  was  therefore 
at  once  adopted.  From  that  time  to  the  present  it  has  been  the 
established  doctrine  of  a  considerable  portion  of  the  schools  of 
this  country  and  of  Europe ;  and  yet  no  two  of  its  teachers  have 
ever  quite  agreed  as  to  what  it  was  that  their  master  had 
really  meant  to  teach.  Having  studied  the  works  of  the  most 
eminent  among  them,  and  having  found  an  almost  universal  dis 
agreement,  the  student  turns,  in  despair,  to  Mr.  Ricardo  himself, 
and  there  he  finds  in  his  celebrated  chapter  oji  rent,  contradictions 
that  cannot  be  reconciled,  and  a  series  of  complications  such  as 
scarcely  ever  before  was  found  in  the  same  number  of  lines.  The 
more  he  studies  the  greater  is  his  difficulty,  and  the  more  readily 
does  he  account  for  the  variety  of  doctrines  taught  by  men  who 
profess  to  belong  to  the  same  school ;  and  who  all  agree,  if  in  little 
else,  in  regarding  the  new  theory  of  rent  as  the  great  discovery  of 
the  age. 

Looking  around,  he  sees  that  all  the  recognized  laws  of  nature 
are  characterized  by  the  most  perfect  simplicity,  and  the  greatest 
breadth — that  they  are  of  universal  application — and  that  those  by 
whom  they  are  taught  are  freed  from  any  necessity  for  resorting  to 
narrow  exceptions  to  account  for  particular  facts.  The  simplicity 
of  Kepler's  law  of  "  equal  areas  in  equal  times"  is  perfect.  Its 
truth  is,  consequently,  universal,  and  all  to  whom  it  is  explained 
feel  assured  not  only  that  it  is  true,  but  that  it  must  continue  to 
be  so  in  relation  to  all  the  planets  that  may  be  discovered,  numerous 
though  they  may  be,  and  however  distant  from  the  sun  and  from 
us.  A  child  may  comprehend  it,  and  the  merest  novice  may  so 
fully  master  it  as  to  fit  himself  for  teaching  it  to  others.  It  needs 

into  cultivation,  the  exchangeable  value  of  raw  produce  will  rise,  because 
more  labor  is  required  to  produce  it."  —  Ricardo' s  Political  Economy, 
chap.  ii. 

8 


106  CHAPTER  IV.   §  2. 

no  commentary,  no  modification,  and  therein  it  differs  greatly  from 
that  to  which  the  reader's  attention  now  is  called.  Whatever  else 
may  be  the  merits  of  the  latter,  it  cannot  be  charged  with  either 
simplicity  or  universality. 

At  first  sight  it  looks,  however,  to  be  exceedingly  simple.  Rent 
is  said  to  be  paid  for  land  of  the  first  quality,  yielding  a  hundred 
quarters  in  return  to  a  given  quantity  of  labor,  when  it  becomes 
necessary,  with  the  increase  of  population,  to  cultivate  land  of  the 
second  quality,  capable  of  yielding  but  ninety  quarters  in  return  to 
the  same  quantity  of  labor ;  and  the  amount  of  rent  then  paid  for 
No.  1  is  equal  to  the  difference  between  their  respective  products. 
No  proposition  could  be  calculated  to  command  more  universal 
assent.  Every  man  who  hears  it  sees  around  him  land  that  pays  rent, 
and  sees,  too,  that  that  which  yields  forty  bushels  to  the  acre  pays 
more  rent  than  that  which  yields  but  thirty  ;  and  that  the  difference 
is  nearly  equal  to  the  difference  of  product.  He  becomes  at  once 
a  disciple  of  Mr.  Ricardo,  admitting  that  the  reason  why  prices  are 
paid  for  the  use  of  land  is  that  soils  are  different  in  their  qualities; 
when  he  would  certainly  regard  it  as  in  the  highest  degree  absurd 
if  any  one  were  to  undertake  to  prove  that  prices  are  paid  for  oxen 
because  one  ox  is  heavier  than  another — that  rents  are  paid  for 
houses  because  some  will  accommodate  twenty  persons  and  others 
only  ten — or  that  all  ships  command  freights  because  some  ships 
differ  from  others  in  their  capacity. 

The  whole  system  is  based,  as  the  reader  will  perceive,  upon  the 
assertion  of  the  existence  of  the  fact,  that,  in  the  commencement 
of  cultivation,  when  population  is  small  and  land  consequently 
abundant,  the  richest  soils — those  whose  qualities  fit  them  for 
yielding  the  largest  return  to  any  given  quantity  of  labor — alone 
are  cultivated.  This  fact  exists  or  it  does  not.  If  it  has  no  exist 
ence,  the  system  falls  to  the  ground.  That  it  has  none,  and  that 
it  is  contrary  to  the  nature  of  things  that  it  should  have  had,  or 
can  ever  have  it,  it  is  proposed  now  to  show. 

The  picture  presented  by  Mr.  Ricardo  differs  totally  from  that 
which  has  above  been  presented  for  the  consideration  of  the  reader. 
The  former,  placing  the  settler  on  the  lands  of  highest  fertility, 
requires  that  his  children  and  his  children's  children  should,  each 
in  regular  succession  to  the  others,  find  themselves  driven,  by  sad 
necessity,  to  the  occupation  of  those  capable  of  yielding  smaller 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  101 

returns  to  labor — and  that  they  should  thus  become,  from  genera 
tion  to  generation,  more  and  more  the  slaves  of  nature.  The  latter, 
placing  the  early  settler  on  the  poorer  soils,  exhibits  his  successors 
exercising  constantly  increasing  power  to  pass  to  the  cultivation  of 
the  richer  soils — and  becoming,  from  generation  to  generation,  more 
and  more  the  masters  of  nature,  compelling  her  to  do  their  work, 
and  pressing  steadily  onward  from  triumph  to  triumph,  with  con 
stant  increase  in  the  power  of  association,  in  the  development  of 
individuality,  in  the  feeling  of  responsibility,  and  in  the  power  of 
further  progress.  Which  of  these  pictures  is  the  true  one,  is  toT\ 
be  settled  by  the  determination  of  the  fact,  what  it  is  that  men  in 
times  past  have  done,  and  what  it  is  they  are  now  doing,  in  regard 
to  the  occupation  of  the  earth.  If  it  can  be  shown  that,  in  every 
country  and  at  every  age,  the  order  of  events  has  been  in  direct 
opposition  to  that  it  is  supposed  by  Mr.  Ricardo  to  have  been,  then 
must  his  theory  be  abandoned  as  wholly  destitute  of  foundation. 
That  it  has  been  so,  and  that  everywhere,  in  both  ancient  and 
modern  times,  cultivation  has  commenced  on  the  poorer  soils — and 
that  it  has  been  with  the  growth  of  population  and  wealth  alone 
that  man  has  been  enabled  to  subdue  to  cultivation  the  richer 
ones,  will  now  be  shown  by  a  brief  examination  of  the  facts  as  pre 
sented  in  the  history  of  the  world. 

That  examination  will  be  commenced  with  the  United  States; 
and  for  the"  reason  that,  their  settlement  having  been  recent,  and 
being,  indeed,  still  in  progress,  the  course  to  which  the  settler  has 
been  and  is  prompted,  can  readily  be  traced.  If  we  find  him  in 
variably  commencing  on  the  high  and  thin  lands,  requiring  little 
clearing  and  no  drainage — those  capable  of  yielding  but  small 
return  to  labor — and  as  invariably  passing  from  the  higher  to  the 
lower  ones,  requiring  both  clearing  and  drainage,  then  will  the  view 
presented  to  the  reader  as  the  true  one  be  confirmed  by  practice — 

at  least  by  the  practice  of  America.     If,  however,  we  can  then  fol- 

low  the  settler  into  Mexico,  and  through  Brazil,  Peru,  and  Chili — 
into  Britain,  and  through  France,  Germany,  Italy,  Greece,  and 
Egypt,  into  Asia  and  Australia — and  show  that  such  has  been  his 
invariable  course  of  action,  then  may  it  be  believed  that  when 
population  is  small,  and  land  consequently  abundant,  the  work  of 
cultivation  is,  and  always  must  be,  commenced  upon  the  poorer, 
soils — that  with  the  growth  of  population  and  wealth,  the  richer 


108  CHAPTER  IV.   §  3. 

ones  are  always  brought  into  activity,  with  constantly  increasing 
return  to  the  efforts  of  the  laborer — and  that,  with  the  progress  of 
population  and  wealth,  there  is  a  steady  diminution  in  the  propor 
tion  of  those  efforts  required  for  obtaining  the  necessaries  of  life, 
with  constant  increase  in  the  proportion  that  may  be  applied  to 
adding  to  its  comforts,  conveniences,  luxuries,  and  enjoyments. 

§  3.  The  first  settlers  of  the  English  race  are  seen  to  have  esta 
blished  themselves  on  the  barren  soil  of  Massachusetts — found 
ing  the  colony  of  Plymouth.  The  whole  continent  was  before 
them,  but,  like  all  other  colonists,  they  had  to  take  what,  with 
their  means,  they  could  obtain.  Other  settlements  were  formed  at 
Newport  and  New  Haven,  and  thence  they  may  be  traced,  follow 
ing  the  courses  of  the  rivers,  but  occupying  in  all  cases  the  higher 
lands,  leaving  the  clearing  of  timber  and  the  draining  of  swamps 
to  their  more  wealthy  successors.  Were  the  reader  desired  to 
designate  the  soils  of  the  Union  least  calculated  for  the  production 
of  food,  his  choice  would  fall  upon  the  rocky  lands  first  occupied 
by  the  hardy  Puritans  ;  and  were  he  now  to  place  himself  on  Dor 
chester  heights,  near  Boston,  and  look  around  him,  he  would  find 
himself  surrounded  everywhere  by  evidences  that  poor  as  was  in 
general  the  soil  of  Massachusetts,  the  richest  portions  of  it  remain 
even  yet  uncultivated;  while  of  those  in  cultivation  the  most  pro 
ductive  are  those  that  have  been  subdued  to  the  uses  of  man  in  the 
last  half  century. 

Looking  now  to  New  York  we  see  that  the  process  has  been 
the  same.  The  unproductive  soil  of  Manhattan  island  and  the 
higher  lands  of  the  opposite  shores,  claimed  early  attention,  while 
the  lower  and  richer  ones  close  at  hand  remain,  even  to  the  present 
moment  undrained  and  uncultivated.  Following  the  population, 
we  find  them  passing  along  the  course  of  the  Hudson  to  the  Yalley 
of  the  Mohawk,  and  there  establishing  themselves  near  the  head  of 
the  stream  on  lands  requiring  but  little  of  either  clearing  or  drain 
age.  Passing  further  west,  we  see  the  early  railroad  following  the 
course  of  the  higher  lands  upon  which  are  found  the  villages  and 
towns  of  the  earlier  settlers  ;  but  if  we  follow  the  new  and  straight 
road  we  find  it  passing  through  the  richest  lands  of  the  State,  as 
jet  undrained  and  uncultivated. 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  109 

Looking  next  into  the  history  of  even  those  towns  and  villages 
we  find  that  they  themselves  came  late  in  the  order  of  settlement. 
Sixty  years  since  Geneva  had  scarcely  an  existence,  and  the  road 
thence  to  Canandaigua  was  but  an  Indian  path,  upon  which  but  two 
families  as  yet  had  settled — but  looking  thence  south,  towards  the 
high  lands  bordering  on  Pennsylvania,  we  meet  everywhere  with 
evidence  of  occupation.  The  great  purchase  of  Mr.  Pulteney  was 
there  made,  and  a  settlement  was  formed  on  the  Coshocton  creek,  the 
lands  around  being  described  as  very  valuable  because  of  their  "  total 
exemption  from  all  periodical  disorders,  particularly  the  fever  and 
ague" — from  which,  as  is  so  well  known,  the  later  settlers  on  the 
rich  lands  of  the  lower  Genesee  country  so  severely  suffered.* 

In  New  Jersey,  we  find  them  occupying  the  higher  lands  towards 
the  heads  of  the  rivers,  while  neglecting  the  lower  grounds  that 
cannot  drain  themselves,  f  That^State  still  abounds  in  fine  timber, 
covering  rich  lands  requiring  only  to  be  cleared  to  yield  larger 
returns  to  labor  than  any  of  those  cultivated  a  century  since,  when 
land  was  more  abundant,  and  population  small.  On  the  banks  of 
the  Delaware,  we  find  the  Quakers  selecting  the  lighter  soils  which 
produce  the  pine,  while  avoiding  the  richer  and  heavier  ones  of  the 
opposite  shore  of  Pennsylvania.  Every  settler  selects,  too,  the 
higher  and  drier  parts  of  his  farm,  leaving  the  meadows,  many  of 
which  remain  even  now  in  a  state  of  nature,  while  others  have  been 
drained  within  the  last  few  years.  The  best  portions  of  every  farm 
are,  invariably,  those  which  have  been  most  recently  brought  into 
cultivation,  while  the  poorest  lands  of  the  various  neighborhoods 
are  those  on  which  are  seen  the  oldest  farm-houses.  Passing 
further  through  the  sandy  lands  of  the  State,  we  find  hundreds 
of  little  clearings,  long  since  abandoned  by  their  owners,  attest 
ing  the  character  of  the  soil  that  men  cultivate  when  population 
is  small,  and  fertile  land  most  abundant.  Having  cleared  the  lands 
that  produce  the  oak,  or  drained  those  which  yield  the  white  cedar, 

*  On  the  map  of  the  Genesee  tract  published  in  1790,  the  settled  town 
ships  are  marked,  and  they  are  found  at  and  near  the  junction  of  the 
Canisteo,  Cahoctin,  and  Tioga  rivers,  where  Corning  is  now  situated — 
around  Hornellsville  and  on  the  head  waters  of  the  Canisteo — &c.,  &c. — 
See  Documentary  History  of  New  York,  vol.  ii.  (octavo  edition),  p.  1111, 
&c. 

f  The  reader  may  see  this  by  reference  to  the  map  of  East  Jersey  in  1682, 
recently  republished. 


110  CHAPTER  IV.   §  3. 

they  abandon   those  which  produce  the  pine   of  that  State,  the 
poorest  of  all  the  pines. 

The  Swedes  settled  Lewistown  and  Christiana,  on  the  sandy  soil 
of  Delaware.  Crossing  the  State  towards  the  head  of  Chesapeake 
Bay,  we  find,  in  the  little  and  decaying  towns  of  Elkton  and  Charles- 
town,  once  the  centres  of  a  somewhat  active  population,  further 
evidence  of  the  poverty  of  the  soils  first  occupied,  when  fine  meadow- 
land,  on  which  are  now  the  richest  farms  in  that  State,  was  abundant, 
but  held  as  worthless.  Penn  follows  the  Swedes,  and,  profiting  by 
their  expenditure  and  experience,  selects  the  high  lands  on  the 
Delaware,  about  twelve  miles  north  of  the  site  which  he  afterwards 
chooses  for  his  city,  near  the  confluence  of  that  river  and  the 
Schuylkill.  Starting  from  this  latter  point,  and  tracing  the  course 
of  settlement,  we  find  it  not  at  first  extending  downwards  towards 
the  rich  meadow-lands,  but  upwards  along  the  ridge  between  the 
two  rivers,  where  many  miles  of  early  settlements  remain  to 
mark  the  tendencies  of  early  colonists.  Passing,  right  or  left,  to 
the  river  banks,  we  see,  in  the  character  of  the  buildings,  evi 
dences  of  later  occupation  and  cultivation.  On  the  maps  of  that 
early  day,  the  fertile  lands  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Delaware,  from 
New  Castle  almost  to  the  head  of  tide-water,  a  distance  of  more 
than  sixty  miles,  are  marked  as  held  in  large  tracts,  and  dotted 
over  with  trees,  to  show  that  they  are  still  uncleared — while  all  the 
upper  lands  are  divided  into  little  farms.*  Passing  northward 
and  westward,  we  see  the  oldest  habitations  always  most  distant 
from  the  river ;  but  later  times,  and  increase  of  population  and 
wealth,  have  carried  cultivation  to  the  water's  edge.  With  every 
additional  mile,  we  find  increasing  evidence  of  the  recent  cultiva 
tion  of  the  best  soils.  Everywhere  we  now  meet  farms  on  the 
hill-sides,  while  the  lower  lands  become  more  wild  and  rough. 
Further  on,  cultivation  almost  leaves  the  river  bank,  and  if  we 
would  seek  it  we  must  pass  outward,  where,  at  a  distance,  we  may 
find  farms  that  have  been  cultivated  for  half  a  century  or  more.  If 
now,  following  the  old  road,  winding  about,  and  seeking,  appa 
rently,  hills  to  cross,  we  inquire  the  cause  of  thus  lengthening  the 
distance,  we  learn  that  it  was  made  to  suit  the  early  settlers  ;  but, 
if  we  follow  the  new  roads,  they  are  found  keeping  near  the  stream, 

*  See  Holmes's  Map,  published  in  1681,  and  recently  republished. 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  Ill 

on  the  low  and  rich  lands  last  brought  into  cultivation.*  Return 
ing  to  the  river,  and  passing  on  our  course,  the  trees  become  more 
and  more  numerous,  and  the  meadow-land  less  and  less  drained  or 
occupied  ;  until,  at  length,  as  we  pass  up  the  little  branches  of  the 
river,  cultivation  disappears,  and  the  original  woods  remain  un 
touched,  except  so  far  as  the  wants  of  the  recently  established  coal 
trade  have  tended  to  their  extermination.  If  we  desire  to  see  the 
land  chosen  by  the  early  settlers,  we  have  but  to  ascend  the  hill 
side,  and  on  the  flat  above  will  be  found  houses  and  farms,  some  of 
them  half  a  century  old,  many  of  which  are  now  abandoned. 
Crossing  the  mountains,  we  see,  near  their  tops,  the  habitations  of 
early  settlers,  who  selected  the  land  of  the  pine,  easily  cleared ; 
and  whose  pine-knots  afforded  at  one  time  tar,  and,  at  another, 
substitutes  for  candles  that  they  were  too  poor  to  buy.  Imme 
diately  afterwards,  we  find  ourselves  in  the  valley  of  the  Susque- 
hanna,  on  meadow-lands  whose  character  is  proved  by  the  great 
size  of  the  timber  by  which  they  are  covered  ;  but  upon  which 
neither  the  spade  nor  the  plough  has  yet  made  its  mark.  Rich 
lands  thus  abound,  but  the  settler  prefers  the  poorer  ones,  as  the 


*  "  In  the  regions  sufficiently  advanced  to  admit  the  construction  of 
canals  and  railroads,  every  one  has  it  in  his  power  to  verify  the  fact,  by 
observing  the  contrast  in  the  aspect  of  the  lands  bordering  their  course, 
and  those  which  line  the  old  highways.  The  latter  will  generally  be  found 
ascending  every  hill-top  which  lies  in  the  neighborhood  of  their  general 
direction,  even  when  nothing  is  saved,  in  point  of  distance,  by  going  over 
the  hill  instead  of  going  round  it.  It  is  usually  found,  indeed,  that  the 
length  of  a  railroad  connecting  two  towns  at  any  considerable  distance  from 
each  other,  is  less  than  that  of  the  old  roads  which  formed  the  route  of  travel 
before  it  was  built ;  although  the  former  is  necessarily  under  restrictions 
which  prevent  attempts  to  save  distance  at  the  expense  of  elevations  in 
the  grade,  much  more  than  the  ordinary  carriage-road.  But  the  highway 
is  lined  with  cultivated  fields,  and  with  houses.  It  was  made  to  facilitate 
communication  between  them,  its  track  worn  by  the  footsteps  of  men  before 
it  was  run  out  by  the  surveyor,  and  its  purposes  compelled  it  to  go  where 
population  went,  with  small  regard  to  the  labor  which  its  steep  grades  would 
impose  upon  the  beasts  of  draught  that  were  to  toil  over  it.  The  railroad, 
on  the  contrary,  is  constructed  by  engineers,  whose  problem  it  is  to  reduce 
the  power  to  be  expended  in  drawing  heavy  loads  to  a  minimum,  regard 
being  had  both  to  distance  and  to  elevation.  It  plunges  through  swamps 
and  forests,  as  if  to  hide  itself  from  the  habitations  of  men.  They  will 
grow  up  upon  its  edge  in  due  season,  for  the  road  has  drained  the  swamps, 
and  let  in  the  siinlight  to  the  gloomy  depths  of  the  woods  ;  but,  upon  the 
first  opening  of  a  railroad,  we  ordinarily  are  struck  with  the  juxtaposition 
of  this  work  of  highest  art  with  those  of  rudest  nature. — (Smith,  Manual 
of  Political  Economy,  p.  52.) 


112  CHAPTER  IV.  §  3, 

cost  of  clearing  the  former  would  be  more  than  they  were  worth 
when  cleared.)  Descending  the  little  stream,  we  reach  the  Susque- 
hanna;  and,  with  every  step  of  our  progress,  cultivation  is  seen 
descending  the  hills,  the  valleys  becoming  more  cleared  of  timber, 
and  meadows  and  cattle  appearing — the  most  certain  signs  of 
increasing  wealth  and  population. 

Passing  west  up  the  Susquehanna,  the  order  is  again  inverted. 
Population  diminishes,  and  cultivation  tends  to  leave  the  river  bot 
tom,  and  to  ascend  the  hill-sides.  If,  leaving  the  river  and  ascend 
ing  the  bank,  we  pass  to  the  foot  of  the  Muncy  hills,  our  road  will 
cross  fine  limestone  land  whose  food-producing  qualities  being  less 
obvious  to  the  early  settlers,  whole  tracts  of  it,  containing  hun 
dreds  of  acres,  passed  from  hand  to  hand  in  exchange  for  a  dollar, 
or  even  for  a  jug  of  whiskey.  They  preferred  the  oak-producing 
soils,  whose  trees  they  could  girdle,  and  afterwards  destroy  by  fire. 
With  increasing  population  and  wealth,  they  are  seen  returning  to 
the  lands  at  first  despised,  combining  the  inferior  and  superior 
soils,  and  obtaining  greatly  increased  returns  to  labor.  Could  we 
now  take  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  country,  we  might  trace  with 
perfect  accuracy  the  course  of  every  little  stream,  by  the  timber 
still  standing  on  its  banks,  conspicuous  among  the  higher  and 
cleared  lands  of  the  neighborhood.  Attaining  the  head  of  the 
stream,  we  are  again  in  the  midst  of  cultivation,  and  see  that, 
here,  as  everywhere  else,  the  settlers  have  selected  the  high  and 
dry  lands  upon  which  they  might  commence  with  the  plough,  in 
preference  to  the  more  fertile  soils  that  required  the  axe.  If, 
instead  of  turning  southward  towards  the  older  counties,  we  look 
northward  to  the  newly  settled  ones,  we  shall  find  the  centre  of 
population  always  occupying  the  highest  lands,  near  the  head  of 
the  several  little  streams  which  there  originate.  Passing  west 
ward,  and  crossing  the  ridge  of  the  Alleghany  to  the  head-waters 
of  the  Ohio,  the  order  of  things  is  again  inverted.  Population  at 
first  being  scattered,  occupies  the  higher  lands,  but  as  we  descend 
the  river,  the  lower  ones  become  more  and  more  cleared ;  until  at 
length  we  find  ourselves  at  Pittsburg,  in  the  midst  of  a  dense 
population,  actively  employed  in  bringing  into  connection  the  coal, 
the  limestone,  and  the  iron  ore  with  a  view  to  the  preparation  of 
machinery  for  enabling  the  farmer  of  the  west  to  sink  deeply  into 
the  land  of  which  heretofore  he  has  but  scratched  the  superficial 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  113 

soil ;  and  to  clear  and  drain  the  fertile  lands  of  the  river  bottoms, 
instead  of  the  higher  and  drier  ones  from  which  he  has  heretofore 
derived  his  supplies  of  food. 

l^The  early  settlers  of  the  West  uniformly  selected  the  higher 
•  lands,  leaving  the  lower  and  richer  ones  for  their  successors.  The 
immediate  valleys  of  streams,  fertile  as  were  the  soils,  were  and 
still  are  avoided  on  account  of  danger  to  be  apprehended  from  the 
fevers  which  even  now  sweep  off  so  many  of  the  emigrants  to  the 
newer  States.  The  facility  of  getting  some  small  crop,  always 
prompted  to  the  selection  of  the  land  most  readily  brought  under 
cultivation,  and  none  so  well  answered  the  purpose  as  that  which 
was  slightly  clothed  with  timber,  and  clear  of  undergrowth.  The 
constant  fall  of  leaves  had  by  their  decay  kept  the  ground  covered 
with  a  light  mould,  and  prevented  the  growth  of  grass ;  and  by 
deadening  the  trees  to  let  in  the  sun,  they  could  obtain  a  small 
return  to  labor.  The  first  great  object  was  to  have  a  dry  place 
for  the  dwelling,  and  therefore  the  settler  was  always  found  select 
ing  the  ridges — the  same  reason  which  prevented  him  from  com 
mencing  the  work  of  artificial  drainage  to  secure  a  place  for  his 
dwelling,  operating  with  equal  force  in  regard  to  laud  required  for 
cultivation.*  ) 

*  The  following  extract  from  an  article  in  the  Merchant's  Magazine  fur 
nishes  so  many  facts  illustrative  of  the  course  of  operation  throughout  this 
country  that  it  can  scarcely  fail  to  be  read  with  interest : — 

"  The  proposition  proclaimed  by  Carey  in  opposition  to  the  long  received 
theories  of  Ricardo  and  Malthus,  and  recently  sustained  by  Mr.  Smith  in 
his  Manual  of  Political  Economy,  that  the  inferior  lands  are  first  occupied 
by  1'ic  pioneers,  is  a  fact  that  strikes  one,  throughout  the  whole  West — at 
the  South  and  The  North.  The  oldest  settlements  are  always  found  upon 
the  thinly- wooded  and  comparatively  barren  hill  lands,  upon  the  dry  and 
upland  prairies.  The  sandy  plains  and  pine  barrens  of  Georgia,  Alabama, 
Florida,  and  Mississippi,  received  the  first  emigrants.  The  first  homes  of 
Texas  were  built  on  the  upland  prairies — studded  with  their  islands  of 
timber,  that  gave  illimitable  ranges  to  stock,  and  sustained  here  and  there 
small  patches  of  corn.  The  smoke  from  the  first  log  cabins  on  the  Missis 
sippi  River  ascended  from  the  high  clay  and  rocky  bluffs  on  its  shores, 
around  which  are  now  the  poorest  soils.  In  Arkansas  and  Missouri  the 
first  settlers  are  found  among  the  pine  lands  and  hills,  still  in  the  hunter 
state,  their  civilization  and  their  lands  but  a  little  more,  if  any,  advanced 
or  improved  than  they  were  the  day  they  became  squatters  thereon.  On 
the  Ohio,  the  truth  of  the  position  is  more  apparent.  The  original  pioneers 
selected  Wheeling,  Marietta,  Limestone,  North  Bend,  and  Vevay,  as  the 
first  town  sites,  in  the  poorest  agricultural  regions  on  the  river ;  and  the 
first  population  along  the  whole  river  spread  itself  over  the  hills,  and 
cleared  their  first  fields  and  patches  on  the  oak  knobs  and  thin  soil  of  the 


114  CHAPTER  IV.   §  3. 

Passing  into  Wisconsin,  the  traveller  finds  the  first  white  settler 
of  the  State  placed  on  its  highest  land,  known  by  the  title  of  "The 
Big  Mound" — and  he  follows  the  early  roads  along  the  ridges 
upon  which  are  found  the  little  towns  and  villages  created  by  the 
men  who  have  had  there  to  commence  the  work  of  cultivation. 
Occasionally  he  crosses  a  "wet  prairie,"  in  which  may  be  found 
the  richest  land  of  the  State,  and  "  the  terror  of  the  early  emi 
grant."* 

uplands,  where  twenty  acres  are  not  worth  one  acre  of  the  rich  bottoms 
which  the  first  settlers  rejected  at  a  price  a  little  more  than  the  surveyor's 
fees  for  locating.  And  now  along  the  whole  extent  of  the  Lower  Ohio,  the 
deserted  and  falling  log  cabin  of  the  first  settler  is  found  by  the  side  of 
some  gushing  spring  among  the  hills — his  little  patch  grown  up  to  briers 
and  bushes,  and  surrounded  by  a  forest  as  desolate  and  silent  as  when  it 
was  first  disturbed  with  the  stroke  of  the  woodman's  axe.  Or,  if  it  be 
still  inhabited,  it  is  encompassed  by  a  sickly  patch  of  corn,  the  soil  of 
which  is  too  poor  to  tempt  the  speculators  to  enter  it  over  the  squatter's 
head,  which  is  still  covered  with  a  coon-skin  cap,  and  his  feet  with  moc- 
casons. 

"  This  country  has  on  its  rugged  hill-sides  hundreds  of  these  crumbling 
and  deserted  memorials  of  the  early  pioneers.  George  Ewing,  brother  of 
the  Hon.  Thos.  Ewing,  of  Ohio,  was  among  the  first  settlers  in  this  region, 
and  located  himself  on  a  tract  of  land — when  he  had  the  selection  of  all 
the  richest  bottom  lands  in  the  country — which,  at  this  day,  is  worth  but 
little  more  than  he  paid  the  government  for  it,  forty  years  ago  ;  and  the 
field  where  he  buried  the  father  and  mother  of  one  of  the  most  eminent 
men  of  his  country,  is  fast  returning  to  its  wilderness  state.  And  yet 
George  Ewing  was  a  man  of  intelligence,  and  of  sound  judgment  and  sa 
gacity,  and  though  less  cultivated,  was  in  native  powers  not  inferior  to  his 
brother.  He  with  his  father  cut  the  first  wagon  path  into  Wheeling,  and 
was  among  the  first  white  men  that  crossed  the  Ohio.  He  lived  first  near  the 
rich  valley  of  the  Muskingum,  then  in  sight  of  the  teeming  lands  of  the 
Scioto,  and  removed  successively  through  the  richest  regions  of  Ohio,  Ken 
tucky,  and  Indiana,  always  in  advance  of  the  tide  of  emigration,  having 
the  first  choice  of  all  the  lands  on  the  river,  and  yet,  at  his  death,  there 
was  not  an  acre  of  any  of  the  lands  he  had  possessed  worth  double  the 
price  he  had  paid  the  government  for  it.  These  are  remarkable  facts  in 
the  history  of  the  first  settlers,  and  difficult  to  be  accounted  for  except  on 
the  grounds  assigned  by  Carey  and  Smith." 

*  "  Many  small  tracts,  known  as  « wet  prairie'  fifteen  years  ago,  and  re 
jected  by  the  first  settlers,  have  become  dry  by  being  annually  resown,  and 
fed  down  by  domestic  animals,  without  any  other  than  its  natural  drain 
age,  and  exposure  to  the  sun  and  air,  by  the  destruction  of  the  impervious 
screen  of  tall  '  slough  grass.' 

"  The  '  dry  prairies'  are  generally  very  similar  in  appearance,  so  far  as 
surface  is  concerned.  Small  portions  of  '  level  prairie'  are  found  every 
where,  but  to  constitute  dry  prairie  it  must  be  'rolling.'  Between  the 
waves  on  this  great  ocean  of  God's  own  beautiful  sod  are  the  '  sloughs,'  the 
terror  of  the  early  emigrant,  and  the  most  valued  possession  of  his  successor,  as 
often  affording  water,  and  always  an  unfailing  and  most  luxuriant  natural 
meadow.  These  sloughs  are  the  drains  of  the  dry  prairie.  They  are  in 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  115 

Descending  the  Ohio,  and  arriving  at  the  confluence  of  that 
river  and  the  Mississippi,  we  lose  sight  of  all  signs  of  population, 
except  that  of  the  poor  wood-cutter,  who  risks  his  health  while 
engaged  in  providing  wood  for  the  numerous  steamboats.  Here, 
for  hundreds  of  miles,  we  pass  through  the  most  fertile  land, 
covered  with  timber  of  gigantic  size  ;  but,  with  all  its  powers  of 
production,  it  is  valueless  for  all  purposes  of  cultivation.  Un em 
banked,  it  is  liable  to  overflow  from  the  river,  and  its  neighborhood 
is  destructive  of  life  and  health  ;  and  millions  of  acres  possessed  of 
qualities  fitting  them  to  yield  the  largest  return  to  labor,  remain 
uncleared  and  undrained,  while  the  higher  and  poorer  lands  are 
under  cultivation.* 

Descending  further,  we  meet  population  and  wealth  in  the  act 
of  ascending  the  Mississippi,  from  the  shores  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 

general  nearly  parallel,  and  oftenest  at  about  a  right  angle  with  the  course 
of  the  rivers  ;  they  are  from  140  to  160  rods  asunder,  and  sometimes  of 
many  miles  in  length.  The  soil  of  the  dry  prairie  is  from  12  to  18  inches 
deep  in  this  region  ;  the  wet  prairie  in  general  much  deeper  :  and  the 
alluvion  (of  the  river  bottoms),  as  in  all  countries,  of  irregular  and  often 
astonishing  depth." — Proceedings  of  Pomological  Convention,  Syracuse, 
1849. 

*  "  The  Lower  Mississippi  is  bordered  upon  each  side  by  a  broad  belt  of 
low  land,  known  as  "the  Swamp."  At  Memphis,  in  the  southwestern 
corner  of  Tennessee,  the  bluff  touches  the  eastern  side  of  the  river,  and 
then,  bearing  away  to  the  eastward,  approaches  the  river  no  more  until  it 
reaches  a  point  near  Natchez. 

"  While  the  hill  country  has  become  cleared  and  settled  with  that  rapidity 
which  characterizes  the  advance  of  the  Western  States,  "  the  Swamp," 
notwithstanding  its  boundless  fertility,  has  remained  almost  a  wilderness. 
The  enterprising  planter,  who,  leaving  the  worn-out  lands  of  Virginia  or 
the  Carolinas,  seeks  a  location  where  the  soil  may  repay  more  liberally  the 
labors  of  the  husbandman,  shrinks  from  exposing  his  slaves  to  the  deadly 
miasma  of  its  stagnant  lagoons,  and  to  the  toil  of  clearing  its  tangled  and 
wiry  brakes.  In  some  places,  indeed,  wealthy  farmers  who  have  boldly 
and  patiently  met  these  dangers  and  obstacles,  have  succeeded  in  opening 
magnificent  farms  on  which  a  bale  to  the  acre  is  but  an  ordinary  crop. 
Unfortunately,  however,  a  rise  of  water  occasionally  overflows  the  whole 
farm,  covering  the  fields  with  driftwood,  sweeping  away  stock,  and  leaving 
the  work  of  years  a  ruin. — But  the  swamp  has  other  denizens,  who,  fortu 
nately  for  themselves,  are  in  more  independent  circumstances,  since  they 
owe  nothing  to  fortune,  and  cannot,  therefore,  be  expected  to  pay  her  any 
thing.  These  are  the  wood-cutters,  the  lumbermen,  the  trappers,  bee  and 
bear  hunters,  and  fishermen,  who  have  made  their  cabins  by  the  side  of 
some  lake  or  bayou,  and  who,  secure  of  a  subsistence  while  the  dug-out 
will  float,  and  their  hands  can  wield  axe  and  rifle,  pay  a  very  literal 
obedience  to  the  injunction  of  scripture,  and  "take  no  thought  for  the 
morrow." — Correspondence  of  New  York  Tribune. 


. 


116  CHAPTER  IV.  §  3. 

Embankments,  or  levies,  keep  out  the  river,  and  the  finest  planta 
tions  are  seen  on  land,  corresponding,  in  every  respect,  with  the 
wild  and  uncultivated  region  left  behind.  If,  now,  the  traveller 
desires  to  seek  the  habitations  of  the  early  settlers,  he  must  leave 
the  river  bank  and  ascend  the  hills;  (and,  with  every  step,  he  will 
'  find  new  proof  that  cultivation  invariably  commences  on  the  poorer 
soils^  Interrogating  the  pioneer  settlers  why  they  waste  their  labor 
on  tne  poor  soil  of  the  hill-tops,  while  fertile  soils  abound,  their 
answer  is  invariably  found  to  be,  that  the  one  they  can  cultivate  as 
it  stands,  while  the  other  they  cannot.  The  pine  of  the  hills  is 
small,  and  easily  cleared,  and  it  affords  him  fuel,  while  its  knots 
furnish  artificial  light.  To  attempt  to  clear  the  land  that  bears  the 
heavy  timber  would  ruin  him.  If,  instead  of  descending  the  Mis 
sissippi,  we  ascend  the  Missouri,  the  Kentucky,  the  Tennessee,  or 
the  Red  River,  we  find,  invariably,  that  the  more  dense  the  popu 
lation,  and  the  greater  the  mass  of  wealth,  the  more  are  the  good 
soils  cultivated — that  as  population  diminishes  with  our  approach 
to  their  head-waters  and  land  becomes  more  abundant,  cultivation 
recedes  from  the  river  banks,  the  timber  and  the  undrained  meadow- 
lands  increase  in  quantity — and  that  the  scattered  inhabitants 
obtain  from  the  superficial  soils  a  diminishing  return  to  their  labor, 
accompanied  with  diminished  power  to  command  the  necessaries, 
conveniences,  and  comforts  of  life.  Crossing  the  Mississippi  into 
Texas,  we  find  the  town  of  Austin,  the  centre  of  the  first  American 
settlement,  placed  high  up  on  the  Colorado,  while  millions  of  acres 
of  the  finest  timber  and  meadow-lands  in  the  world,  totally  unoccu 
pied,  were  passed  over,  as  incapable  of  paying  the  cost  of  simple 
appropriation.  Looking  to  the  Spanish  colony  of  Bexar,  we  find 
further  illustration  of  the  same  universal  fact,  the  whole  tendency 
of  colonization  being  towards  the  head-waters  of  the  streams. 

Turning  towards  the  Southern  Atlantic  States,  we  meet  everywhere 
evidence  of  the  same  great  fact.  The  richest  lands  of  North  Caro 
lina,  to  the  extent  of  many  millions  of  acres,  remain,  to  this  time, 
uncleared  and  undrained — while  men  are  everywhere  wasting  their 
labor  on  poor  ones  yielding  three,  four,  or  five  bushels  to  the  acre. 
South  Carolina  has  millions  of  acres  of  the  finest  meadow  and  other 
lands,  capable  of  yielding  immense  returns  to  labor,  and  waiting 
only  the  growth  of  wealth  and  population — and  so  is  it  in  Georgia, 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  lit 

Florida,  and  Alabama.  So  entirely  valueless  are  the  richest  lands 
of  the  West,  South,  and  Southwest,  that  Congress  has  recently 
granted  them,  to  the  extent  of  nearly  forty  millions  of  acres,  to  the 
States  in  which  they  lie,  and  the  latter  have  accepted  them. 

The  facts  are  everywhere  the  same,  and,  were  it  possible  to  find 
an  apparent  exception,  it  would  but  prove  the  rule.  For  the  same 
reason  that  the  settler  builds  himself  a  log-house,  to  provide  shelter 
while  waiting  until  he  can  have  one  of  stone,  he  begins  cultivation 
where  he  can  use  his  plough,  and  thus  avoid  the  starvation  that 
would  result  from  endeavoring  to  do  so  where  he  cannot;  and  where 
fevers,  followed  by  death,  would  be  the  inevitable  result  of  the  at 
tempt.  In  every  case  on  record,  in  which  settlements  have  been 
attempted  on  rich  lands,  they  have  either  failed  totally,  or  their 
progress  has  been  slow ;  and  it  has  been  only  after  repeated  efforts 
that  they  have  thriven.  The  reader  who  desires  evidence  of  this 
fact,  and  of  the  absolute  necessity  for  commencing  with  the  poorer 
soils,  may  obtain  it  by  studying  the  history  of  the  French  colonies 
in  Louisiana  and  Cayenne — and  comparing  their  repeated  failures 
with  the  steady  growth  of  those  formed  in  the  region  of  the  St. 
Lawrence,  where  numerous  and  somewhat  prosperous  settlements 
were  formed  at  places  where  the  land  is  now  held  to  be  almost 
utterly  valueless,  because  better  soils  can  be  obtained  elsewhere  at 
so  little  cost  of  labor.  He  may  obtain  additional  evidence  by  com 
paring  the  gentle,  but  steady,  growth  of  the  colonies  planted  on 
the  sterile  soils  of  New  England,  with  the  repeated  failures  of 
colonization  upon  the  richer  lands  of  Virginia  and  Carolina.  The 
latter  could  not  be  reduced  to  cultivation  by  men  working  for  them 
selves  ;  and  hence  it  is,  that  we  find  the  richer  colonists  purchasing 
negroes,  and  compelling  them  to  perform  the  work,  while  the  free 
laborer  seeks  the  light,  sandy  lands  of  North  Carolina.  No  man, 
left  to  himself,  will  commence  the  work  of  cultivation  on  the  rich 
soils,  because  it  is  from  them  that  the  return  is  then  the  least ;  and 
it  is  upon  them,  throughout  all  the  new  countries  of  the  world,  that 
the  condition  of  the  laborer  is  the  worst,  where  the  work  is  under 
taken  in  advance  of  the  habit  of  association  that  comes  with  the 
growth  of  wealth  and  population.  The  settler  who  sought  the 
high,  light  lands  obtained  food,  although  the  return  to  his  labor 
was  very  small.  Had  he  undertaken  to  drain  the  rich  soils  of  the 


118  CHAPTER  IV.  §  4. 

Dismal  Swamp,*  he  would  have  perished  for  want  of  food,  as  did 
those  who  settled  the  fertile  island  of  Roanoke. 

§  4.  Crossing  the  Rio  Grande,  into  Mexico,  the  reader  will  find 
further  illustration  of  the  universality  of  this  law.  At  his  left,  near 
the  mouth  of  the  river,  but  at  some  distance  from  its  bank,  he  will 
see  the  city  of  Matamoras,  of  recent  date.  Starting  from  that 
point,  he  may  follow  the  river  through  vast  bodies  of  the  richest 
lands  in  a  state  of  nature — with  here  and  there  a  scattered  settle 
ment  occupying  the  higher  ones — to  the  mouth  of  San  Juan,  follow 
ing  which  to  its  source,  he  will  find  himself  in  a  somewhat  popu 
lous  country,  having  Monterey  for  its  capital.  Standing  here,  and 
looking  towards  the  north,  he  sees  cultivation  advancing  among 
the  high  lands  of  Chihuahua,  but  keeping,  invariably,  away  from 
the  river  banks.  The  city  of  that  name  is  distant  twenty  miles 
even  from  the  tributary  of  the  great  river,  and  more  than  a  hundred 
from  the  mouth  of  the  little  stream.  Passing  west  from  Monterey, 
through  Saltillo,  and  thence  south,  his  road  will  lie  over  sandy 
plains  whose  existence  is  evidence  of  the  general  character  of  the 
region.  Arriving  in  Potosi,  he  finds  himself  in  a  country  without 

*  There  is,  probably  not  in  the  world,  a  richer  body  of  land  than  that  of 
Lower  Virginia  and  North  Carolina,  of  which  the  Dismal  Swamp  forms  a 
part,  but,  for  that  reason,  it  cannot,  at  present,  be  cultivated.  It  is  thus 
described  in  a  recent  article  of  the  New  York  Tribune  : — 

"  Between  Norfolk  and  the  sea  on  the  east  is  the  County  of  Princess  Ann, 
without  a  single  elevation  which  can  be  called  a  hill,  but  full  of  swamps 
and  lagoons.  Norfolk  County  lies  to  the  south  of  the  town,  and  embraces 
the  Dismal  Swamp,  which  extends  into  North  Carolina  ;  and  beyond  that, 
some  forty  or  fifty  miles,  lies  the  county  around  Elizabeth  City,  on  the 
Albemarle  Sound,  all  low,  and  cut  up  with  creeks,  lagoons,  and  salt-water 
marshes.  West  of  Norfolk  County  is  that  of  Nansemond,  so  low  and  level, 
that  steamboats  run  up  the  Nansemond  River,  and,  by  slight  cuts  through 
the  land,  might  run  all  through  the  county.  Northwest  of  this,  Isle  of 
Wight  County  extends  from  James  River  to  Black  River,  a  branch  of  the 
Chowan  ;  and  that,  as  well  as  Southampton  County,  the  next  west,  is  com 
posed  of  the  same  flat,  sandy  land  and  swamps,  and  sluggish  streams. 
Sometimes  the  surface  is  sandy,  and  just  below  is  a  bed  of  fetid  mud, 
affording  well-water  that  it  is  not  well  to  drink.  This  whole  county  is  full 
of  marl.  Across  the  bay  north  of  Norfolk,  Elizabeth  City  County  overlies 
the  point  of  the  peninsula  formed  by  the  waters  of  the  bay,  Hampton  Roads 
and  Back  Bay,  and  is  almost  as  level  as  the  water.  Ascending  the  James 
River,  which  is  in  places  several  miles  wide,  the  water  is  very  shoal  on  the 
shores,  which  are  occasionally  a  little  elevated.  The  timber  is  mostly  pine 
and  oak  on  the  upland,  with  maple,  ash,  elm,  cypress,  and  other  swamp  woods 
on  the  lowlands,  with  a  dense  growth  of  swamp  bushes." 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  119 

rivers,  and  almost  without  the  possibility  of  irrigation,  and  where 
any  failure  of  the  periodical  rains  is  followed  by  famine  and  death; 
yet,  if  he  cast  his  eyes  downwards  towards  the  coast,  he  sees  a 
magnificent  country,  watered  by  numerous  rivers,  and  in  which  the 
cotton  and  the  indigo  plant  grow  spontaneously — a  country  in 
which  the  maize  grows  with  a  luxuriance  elsewhere  unknown — one 
that  might  supply  the  world  with  sugar,  and  in  which  the  only 
danger  to  be  apprehended  from  the  character  of  the  soil  is,  that 
the  crops  might  be  smothered  by  reason  of  the  rapid  growth  of 
plants  springing  up  in  the  rich  earth,  without  aid,  or  even  permis 
sion,  from  the  man  who  might  undertake  to  cultivate  it;  but  there 
he  sees  no  population.  The  land  is  uncleared  and  undrained,  and 
likely  so  to  remain,  because  those  who  should  undertake  the  work, 
with  the  present  means  of  the  country,  would  starve,  if  they  did 
not  perish  by  the  fevers  that  there,  as  everywhere,  prevail  among 
the  richest  soils  until  they  have  been  subjected  to  cultivation.* 

Passing  on,  he  sees  Zacatecas,  high  and  dry  like  Potosi,  yet  cul 
tivated.  Keeping  the  ridge,  he  has  on  his  left  Tlascala,  once  the 
seat  of  a  great  and  wealthy  people,  far  removed  from  any  stream 
whatsoever,  and  occupying  the  high  lands  from  which  descend  little 
streams  seeking  the  waters  of  both  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific. 
On  his  right  is  the  valley  of  Mexico,  a  land  capable  of  yielding  the 
largest  returns  to  labor — one  that  in  the  time  of  Cortes,  produced 
food  in  abundance  for  forty  cities.  Population  and  wealth  having, 
however,  declined,  the  remaining  people  have  retired  to  the  high 
lands  bordering  the  valley,  to  cultivate  the  poorer  soils  from  which 
the  single  city  that  still  remains  draws  its  supplies  of  food  ;  as  a 

*  "  The  narrow  plain  along  the  sea-coast" — such  are  the  words  of  Mur 
ray's  Encylopcedia  of  Geography,  in  describing  Mexico — "  is  a  tract  in  which 
the  richest  tropical  productions  spring  up  with  a  luxuriance  scarcely  to  be 
paralleled.  Yet,  while  the  climate  is  thus  prolific  of  vegetation,  in  the 
finest  and  most  gigantic  forms,  it  is  almost  fatal  to  animal  life  :  two  conse 
quences  which,  according  to  Humboldt,  are  in  this  climate  almost  insepa 
rable.  The  Spaniards,  terrified  by  this  pestilential  air,  have  made  this 
plain  only  a  passage  to  the  higher  districts,  where  even  the  native  Indians  chose 
rather  to  support  themselves  by  laborious  cultivation,  than  to  descend  into  the 
plains,  where  every  luxury  of  life  is  poured  forth  in  ample  and  spontaneous 
profusion." 

"  Throughout  Mexico  and  Peru,  the  traces  of  a  great  degree  of  civiliza 
tion  are  confined  to  the  elevated  plateaux.  We  have  seen,  on  the  Andes, 
the  ruins  of  palaces  and  baths,  at  heights  between  1GOO  and  1800  toises 
(10,230  and  11,510  English  feQt.")—Humboidt. 


120  CHAPTER  IV.  §  4. 

consequence  of  which  corn  is  higher  in  price  than  in  either  London 
or  Paris,  while  wages  are  very  low.  Fertile  land  is  here  super 
abundant,  but  the  people  fly  from  it ;  whereas,  according  to  Mr. 
Kicardo,  it  is  that  which  would  be  first  appropriated. 

Passing  southward,  Tabasco  is  seen  almost  unoccupied,  although 
possessing  highly  fertile  lands.  Arriving  in  Yucatan,  a  land  in 
which  water  is  a  luxury,  we  meet  a  large  and  prosperous  popula 
tion,  near  neighbors  to  the  better  soils  of  Honduras  that,  when 
population  and  wealth  shall  have  sufficiently  increased,  will  yield 
returns  to  labor  as  large,  if  not  larger,  than  any  hitherto  known — 
yet  now  they  are  a  wilderness,  affording  subsistence  but  to  a  few 
miserable  logwood  and  mahogany  cutters. 

Standing  here,  and  looking  northward,  towards  the  Caribbean 
sea,  we  see  the  little  dry  and  rocky  islands  of  Montserrat,  Nevis, 
St.  Kitts,  St.  Lucia,  St.  Vincent,  and  others,  cultivated  through 
out — while  Trinidad,  with  the  richest  of  soils,  remains  almost  in  a 
state  of  nature,  and  Porto  Rico,  a  land  excelled  by  none  in  fer 
tility,  is  but  now  beginning  to  be  subjected  to  cultivation. 

Turning  next  southward,  we  mark  the  line  of  the  Panama  rail 
road,  pierced  through  thick  jungles  which  reproduced  themselves 
almost  as  rapidly  as  they  were  cleared.  Left  to  itself  it  would 
be  overgrown  again  in  a  single  year,  the  destruction  of  dead 
material  being  there  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  growth  of  that  which 
is  living.  On  the  side  of  Costa  Rica  and  Nicaragua  are  seen 
lands  of  incomparable  fertility  totally  unoccupied,  while  Indian 
villages  may  everywhere  be  seen  midway  up  the  mountains,  on 
lands  that  drain  themselves.* 

Looking  further  south,  and  marking  the  position  of  Santa  Fe 

*  "The  whole  of  the  immense  territory  of  Costa  Rica,  with  the  exception 
of  the  upper  valleys  I  have  mentioned,  is  an  impervious  forest,  known  only 
to  the  beasts  of  prey  which  rove  through  its  sunless  depths,  and  to  a  few 
independent  Indian  tribes  ;  but  this  forest  covers  riches  which  will  be 
found,  when  the  natural  resources  of  the  country  shall  have  been  developed 
by  a  large  immigration  of  a  stronger  race  of  men,  to  be  inexhaustible.  The 
soil  is  of  a  marvellous  fertility,  and  within  its  bosom  contains  some  of  the 
richest  mines.  But  the  immigrants  must  remember  that  if  this  fertility  is 
an  earnest  of  the  wealth  they  may  attain,  it  is  also  one  of  the  great  obsta 
cles  against  which  they  will  have  to  contend,  for  it  is  produced  by  the 
extreme  dampness  of  the  air  and  by  the  continuous  rains  which  last  seven 
months  in  the  settled  parts  of  the  country,  and  may  be  said  to  last  the 
whole  of  the  year  in  the  districts  they  would  have  to  redeem  from  the 
wilderness." — Correspondence  of  the  New  York  Tribime. 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  121 

de  Bogota,  and  the  city  of  Quito,  centres  of  population,  where 
men  cluster  together  on  the  high  and  dry  lands  while  the  valley  of 
Oroonoko*  remains  unoccupied,  the  reader  will  see  exhibited  on  a 
great  scale  the  same  fact  which,  on  a  small  one,  has  been  shown 
to  exist  on  the  banks  of  rivers  of  Pennsylvania.  That  done, 
taking  his  station  on  the  peaks  of  Chimborazo  and  looking  around, 
he  will  see  the  only  civilized  people  of  the  days  of  Pizarro, 
occupying  high  and  dry  Peru,  drained  by  little  streams  whose  rapid 
course  forbade  the  possibility  that  marshes  should  be  formed  in 
which  vegetable  matter  might  decay;  to  give  richness  to  the  soil 
for  the  production  of  timber  before  the  period  of  cultivation,  or  of 
food  afterwards.  Being  poor  it  was  easily  cleared.  Requiring  no 
artificial  drainage,  it  was  early  occupied,  f 

Turning  now  towards  the  East  he  sees  before  him  Brazil,  a  land 
watered  by  the  greatest  rivers  of  the  world,  to  this  day  a  wil 
derness;  yet  capable  of  yielding  in  the  greatest  abundance  sugar, 
coffee,  tobacco,  and  all  other  of  the  productions  of  the  tropics.  Its 
fields  are  covered  with  numberless  herds  of  cattle;  and  the  most 
precious  metals  are  found  near  the  surface  of  the  earth,  but  being 
"destitute  of  those  elevated  table  lands  which  cover  so  much  of 
Spanish  America,  it  affords  no  eligible  situation  for  European 
colonists."^  "  The  largest  rivers"  says  another  writer,  "  are 
those  which  bear  least  upon  their  bosoms  ;"§  and  for  the  reason 
that  such  rivers  constitute  the  drains  of  the  great  basins  of  the 
world,  the  soil  of  which  is  only  to  be  subjected  to  cultivation  when 

*  "  Floods  of  forty  feet  rise  and  upwards  are  frequent  at  this  season  in  the 
great  rivers  of  South  America  ;  the  llanos  of  the  Orinoco  are  changed  into 
an  inland  sea.  The  Amazon  inundates  the  plains  through  which  it  flows, 
to  a  vast  distance.  The  Paraguay  forms  lagoons,  which  like  those  of 
Xarayes,  are  more  than  three  hundred  miles  in  length,  and  ooze  away 
during  the  dry  season." — GuyoVs  Earth  and  Man,  p.  136. 

|  "  On  the  other  side  of  the  Andes  all  is  changed.  Neither  the  trade- 
wind  nor  its  vapors  arrive  at  the  western  coasts.  Scarcely  do  the  table 
lands  of  Peru  and  Bolivia  receive  from  the  latter  benefits,  by  the  storms 
which  burst  out  at  the  limits  of  the  two  atmospheres.  The  coast  of  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  from  Punta  Parina  and  Amatope  to  far  beyond  the  tropic, 
from  the  Equator  to  Chili,  is  scarcely  ever  refreshed  by  the  rains  of  the 
ocean.  *  *  Drought  and  desert  are  their  portion,  and  on  the 
border  of  the  seas,  in  sight  of  the  waves,  they  are  reduced  to  envy  the 
neighboring  countries  of  the  centre  of  the  Continent,  the  gifts  which  the 
ocean  refuses  to  themselves,  while  lavishing  them  on  others." — Ibid,  p.  151., 

J  McCulloch's  Gazetteer. 

§  Gran  Eden.     A  picture  of  Cuba,  p.  234. 
9 


122  CHAPTER  IV.   §  5. 

population  and  wealth,  and  the  consequent  power  of  association, 
shall  have  greatly  grown.  With  that  growth  will  come  the  deve 
lopment  of  individuality,  and  then  men  will  become  free  ;  but  the 
strong  man  is  everywhere  seen  endeavoring  to  cultivate  the  rich 
lands  in  advance  of  both  population  and  wealth — and  therefore 
seizing  upon  the  poor  African,  and  compelling  him  to  work 
for  low  wages,  and  under  conditions  destructive  to  human  life. 
The  most  useful  rivers  of  Brazil,  those  which  bear  most  upon  their 
bosoms,  are  not  the  Amazon,  the  Topayos,  the  Xingu,  or  the 
Negro,  "  flowing  through  regions  which  will  one  day"*  says  Mur 
ray,  "  be  the  finest  in  the  world  ;"  but  "those  between  the  coast 
chain  and  the  sea,  none  of  which  can  attain  any  long  course" — 
and  thus  it  is  that  we  find  on  a  comparison  of  the  several  parts  of 
this  country,  the  same  great  fact  that  is  exhibited  on  so  exten 
sive  a  scale  by  the  Eastern  and  Western  sections  of  the  continent. 
The  short  steep  slope  of  Peru  furnished  the  earliest  civilization  of 
that  portion  of  the  earth,  and  if  we  look  now  to  the  similar  slope 
of  Chili  we  see  a  people  rapidly  advancing  in  population  and 
wealth — while  the  great  valley  of  the  La  Plata,  a  land  capable  of 
yielding  the  largest  return  to  labor,  remains  to  this  hour  steeped 
in  barbarism.  Here,  as  everywhere,  we  have  evidence  that  cultiva 
tion  begins  on  the  poorer  soils. 

§  5.  Crossing  the  ocean  and  landing  in  the  south  of  England, 
the  traveller  finds  himself  in  a  country  in  which  the  streams  are 
short  and  the  valleys  limited;  and,  as  a  consequence,  well  fitted  for 
early  cultivation.  There  it  was  that  Caesar  found  the  only  people 
of  the  island  who  had  made  any  progress  in  the  art  of  tillage — the 
habits  of  life  among  the  natives  becoming  more  rude  and  barbarous 
as  they  receded  from  the  coast.  The  distant  tribes,  as  he  tells  us, 
never  sowed  their  land,  but  foil-owed  the  chase  or  tended  their 
flocks,  living  upon  the  spoils  of  the  one  or  the  milk  of  the  other, 
and  having  skins  for  their  only  raiment. — Turning  next  his  steps 
toward  Cornwall,  he  finds  a  land  noted  for  its  barrenness,  exhibit 
ing  everywhere  marks  of  cultivation  "  of  great  and  unknown 
.antiquity" — and  on  the  outer  edge  of  this  barren  land,  in  a  part  of 

*  Encyclopedia  of  Geography.     Article  Brazil. 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EAETH.  123 

the  country  now  so  remote  from  all  the  thoroughfares  as  scarcely 
even  to  be  visited,  he  meets  with  the  ruins  of  Tintagel,  the  castle 
in  which  King  Arthur  held  his  court.*  On  his  route  he  sees 
scarcely  a  hill-top  not  even  now  exhibiting  evidences  of  early  occu 
pation,  f  Inquiring  next,  for  the  seats  of  early  cultivation,  he  will 
be  referred  to  the  sites  of  rotten  boroughs — to  those  parts  of  the 
kingdom  in  which  men  who  can  neither  read  nor  write,  still  live 
in  mud-built  cottages,  and  receive  eight  shillings  a  week  for  their 
labor — and  to  those  commons  upon  which,  to  so  great  an  extent, 
cultivation  has  recommenced.  J  Seeking  the  palace  of  the  Norman 
Kings,  he  will  find  it  at  Winchester,  and  not  in  the  valley  of  the 
Thames.  Inquiring  for  the  forests  and  swamps  of  the  days  of  the 
Plantagenets,  he  will  everywhere  be  shown  cultivated  lands  of  the 
highest  fertility.  §  Should  curiosity  lead  him  to  desire  to  see  the 
country  whose  morasses  had  nearly  swallowed  up  the  army  of  the 
conquering  Norman,  on  his  return  from  the  devastation  of  the 
north — that  which  daunted  the  antiquary,  Camden,  even  so  late  as 
the  age  of  James  I. — he  would  be  shown  South  Lancashire,  with  its 
rich  fields  covered  with  waving  grain,  and  meadows  on  which  pas 
ture  the  finest  cattle.  Asking  for  the  land  most  recently  reduced 
to  cultivation,  he  will  be  taken  to  the  fens  of  Lincoln — to  the  late 


*  Edinburgh  Review,  Jan.  1851.     Article,  Devon  and  Cornwall. 

f   The  Celt,  the  Roman,  and  the  Saxon,  p.  87. 

t  Such  are  the  lands  described  by  Eden,  less  than  sixty  years  since,  as 
"  the  sorry  pastures  of  geese,  hogs,  asses,  half-grown  horses  and  half-starved 
cattle,"  and  existing  by  thousands  of  acres,  but  which  wanted  only  "  to  be 
enclosed  and  taken  care  of,  to  be  as  rich  and  as  valuable  as  any  lands  now 
in  tillage."  In  many  cases,  however,  cultivation  is  shown  to  have  been 
extended  over  lands  so  entirely  worthless,  that  even  now,  with  all  the  im 
provements  of  modern  times  they  cannot  be  rendered  productive,  as  will 
be  seen  by  the  following  extract  from  a  work  above  referred  to : — 

"  In  many  parts  of  Britain  we  find  distinct  marks  of  former  cultivation 
on  land  which  is  now  common,  and  has  certainly  lain  fallow  for  ages,  and 
it  is  not  impossible  but  it  may  have  been  the  work  of  the  Roman  plough 
share.  »  *  *  Mr.  Bruce  observed  similar  traces  of  cultiva 
tion  on  the  waste  lands  in  Northumberland,  and  he  is  probably  right  in 
attributing  them  to  the  Romans." — Ibid.,  p.  206. 

§  "  If  we  cast  our  eyes  over  the  map  of  Roman  Britain,  we  perceive 
considerable  tracts  of  land  which  the  great  roads  avoided,  and  in  which 
there  were  apparently  no  towns.  These  were  forest  districts,  represented 
by  the  medieval  forests  of  Charnwood,  Sherwood,  and  others,  which 
abounded  in  beasts  of  the  chase.  Some  of  the  more  extensive  forests  were 
inhabited  by  wild  boars,  and  some  even  by  wolves." — Ibid.,  p.  207. 


124  CHAPTER  IV.  §  6. 

sandy  wastes  of  Norfolk — and  to  Cambridgeshire* — all  of  them 
yielding  now  the  largest  and  best  crops  of  England;  but  which  yet 
were  almost  wholly  valueless  until  the  steam-engine,  with  its  won 
derful  power,  was  brought  to  aid  the  operations  of  the  agriculturist. 
"  The  expenditure  of  a  few  bushels  of  coal,'7  says  Porter,  "  places 
it  in  the  farmer's  power  to  drain  his  fields  of  superfluous  moisture, 
at  a  comparatively  inconsiderable  expense,  "f 

Should  the  traveller  next  desire  to  study  the  order  of  the  occu 
pation  of  the  land  in  towns  and  villages,  he  would  find,  on  inquir 
ing,  that  those  who  performed  the  work  of  cultivation  had  sought 
the  hill-sides — leaving  the  lower  situations  for  those  who  required 
to  use  the  water  that  drained  from  off  their  lands. J  Further, 
should  he  wish  to  compare  the  present  value  of  what  was  so 
recently  regarded  as  poor  land,  he  would  learn  that  it  had  changed 
places  with  what  was  formerly  considered  rich  land,  and  now  paid 
a  higher  rent;  thus  furnishing  additional  proof  that  not  only  are 
the  best  soils  last  taken  into  cultivation,  but  that  the  command  of 
them  is  obtained  at  the  cost  of  far  less  labor — wages  having  steadily 
risen  with  the  increase  in  the  amount  of  rent.§ 

Passing  north  into  Scotland,  if  we  desire  to  find  the  seats  of 
earliest  cultivation,  it  will  be  required  to  visit  remote  districts, 
now  either  wholly  abandoned,  or  in  which  "the  grazing  of  a 
few  black  cattle  alone  tempts  to  the  claim  of  property  in  the 
soil;"||  and,  if  we  seek  the  earliest  dwellings,  they  will  be  found 

*  "  The  fen  country  of  Cambridgeshire  is  now  so  well  drained  that  almost 
the  whole  of  it  has  become  highly  valuable  land,  bearing  heavy  crops  of 
wheat.  *  *  When  contemplating  it  we  cannot  avoid  being 

struck  with  the  success  which  has  attended  the  application  of  great  skill 
and  consummate  energy  and  perseverance  to  the  work  of  rendering  avail 
able  for  agricultural  purposes  this  extensive  and  once  nearly  worthless 
tract." — Encyclopaedia  Britannica;  new  edition. 

f  Progress  of  the  Nation,  p.  155. 

j  "  In  the  said  manner  are  two  towns,  one  called  Over  Combe,  in  which 
reside  the  yeomen,  who  are  occupied  in  the  culture  and  working  of  the 
land  which  lies  on  the  hill,  and  the  other  called  Nether  Combe,  in  which 
dwell  the  men  who  are  to  make  cloth,  such  as  weavers,  fullers,  dyers,  and 
other  tradesmen." — William  of  Worcester,  between  1430  and  1465,  quoted 
in  Scrope's  History  of  Castle  Combe. 

§  "Looking  to  the  rent-rolls  (land  tax  and  other  documents)  of  former 
times,  it  will  be  found  that,  whilst  stiff  (wheat  and  bean)  land  has  stood 
still,  or  is  rather  deteriorated  in  value,  the  light,  or  what  is  called  poor 
land,  from  an  improved  system  of  cropping,  has  risen  most  considerably." 
— Poor  Law  Commissioner's  Report. 

||  "  Other  and  scarcely  less  interesting  evidences  of  ancient  population 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF   THE  EARTH,  125 

in  districts  that  in  modern  times  remain  "  uninvaded  by  the 
plough."*  The  places  at  which  the  people  of  early  days  were 
accustomed  to  assemble — and  where  they  have  left  behind  them 
evidences  of  their  existence,  in  stone  circles,  similar  to  that  of 
Salisbury  Plain,  in  England — will  invariably  be  found  in  those 
portions  of  the  kingdom  now  presenting  the  smallest  inducements 
for  occupation  or  cultivation. f  Inquiring  for  the  homes  of  the 
chiefs  by  whom  the  peace  of  the  country  was  in  former  times  so 
frequently  disturbed,  we  find  them  in  the  higher  regions  of  the 
country  ;  but  if  we  desire  to  see  what  has  been  styled  the  "  granary 
of  Scotland,"  we  are  referred  to  the  light  and  easily  cleared  and 
cultivated  soils  of  the  Moray  Frith.  Asking  for  the  newest  soils, 
we  are  taken  to  the  Lothians,  or  to  the  banks  of  the  Tweed, 
inhabited  but  a  short  time  since  by  barbarians,  whose  greatest 
pleasure  was  found  in  expeditions,  for  the  purpose  of  plunder, 
into  the  adjacent  English  counties.  Seeking  the  forests  and 
swamps  of  the  days  of  Mary  and  Elizabeth,  we  find  the  finest 
farms  in  Scotland.  Desiring  to  find  the  poorest  people,  we  are 
referred  to  the  isles  of  the  west — Mull  or  Skye — which  were  occu 
pied  when  meadow  lands  were  yet  undrained;  to  Mona's  Isle, 

are  still  observable  in  remote  nooks  of  the  Western  Highlands,  where  the 
Dalriadic  Scots  first  effected  a  settlement  in  the  land  which  has  borne  their 
name  for  centuries.  *  *  In  various  districts  of  the  same  neigh 
borhood,  and  particularly  amid  the  scenes  on  which  a  new  interest  has 
been  conferred  as  those  in  which  the  great  Campbell  passed  some  of  his 
earlier  years,  the  curious  traveller  may  descry  amid  "  the  desolate  heath'' 
indications  on  the  hill-side  of  a  degree  of  cultivation  having  existed  at 
some  former  period  far  beyond  what  is  exhibited  in  that  locality  at  the 
present  day.  The  soil  on  the  sloping  sides  of  the  hills  appears  to  have 
been  retained  by  dwarf  walls,  and  these  singular  terraces  occur  frequently 
at  such  altitudes  as  must  convey  a  remarkably  vivid  idea  of  the  extent 
and  industry  of  an  ancient  population,  where  now  the  grazing  of  a  few 
black  cattle  alone  tempts  to  the  claim  of  property  in  the  soil.  In  other  dis 
tricts  the  half-obliterated  furrows  are  still  traceable  on  heights  which  have  been 
abandoned  for  ages  to  the  fox  and  the  eagle."  "Such  evidences  of  ancient 
population"  as  the  writer  adds,  "occur  in  many  parts  of  Scotland,  and  have 
given  rise  to  the  superstition  of  "  elf  furrows,  by  which,"  as  he  says,  "  they 
are  commonly  known." — Wilson.  Pre-historic  Annals  of  Scotland,  p.  74. 

*  "  Of  these  primitive  pit  dwellings  numerous  traces  are  discernible  on 
Leuchar  moss,  in  the  parish  of  Skene  and  in  other  localities  of  Aberdeen- 
shire  ;  on  the  banks  of  Loch  Fine  in  Argyleshire  ;  in  the  counties  of  Inver 
ness  and  Caithness  ;  and  in  various  other  districts  of  Scotland,  still  unin 
vaded  by  the  plough." — Ibid.,  p.  123. 

f  "  On  one  of  the  wildest  moors  in  the  parish  of  Tongland,  Kirkcud 
brightshire,  a  similar  example  may  be  seen,  consisting  of  a  circle  of  eleven 
stones,  with  a  twelfth  of  larger  dimensions  in  the  centre,  the  summits  of 
the  whole  appearing  just  above  the  moss." — Ibid.,  p.  116. 


126  CHAPTER  IV.  §  6. 

celebrated  in  the  days  when  the  rich  soil  of  the  Lothians  was  yet 
uncultivated  ;  or  to  the  Orkneys,  deemed  in  former  times  so  valu 
able  as  to  be  received  by  the  King  of  Norway  in  pledge  for  the 
payment  of  an  amount  far  greater  than  the  poor  islands  would 
now  command,  did  the  sale  include  the  land  itself  as  well  as  the 
right  of  sovereignty.  Standing  on  the  hills  of  Sutherland,  we  are 
in  the  midst  of  lands  that  have  been,  from  time  immemorial, 
cultivated  by  starving  Highlanders ;  but  on  the  flats  below  are 
rich  crops  of  turnips  growing  on  soil  that  was,  but  a  few  years 
since,  a  waste.  Stand  where  we  may — on  Arthur's  Seat,  or 
Stirling's  towers  ;  or  on  the  hills  which  border  the  great  valley  of 
Scotland — we  see  fertile  soils,  almost,  even  when  not  wholly, 
undrained  and  unoccupied,  while  around  may  be  seen  high  and 
dry  lands  that  have  been  for  centuries  in  cultivation. 

§  6.  Looking  to  France  in  the  days  of  Caesar,  we  see  the  Ar- 
verni,  the  Edui,  and  the  Sequani,  descendants  of  the  earliest  pos 
sessors  of  Gaul,  and  the  most  powerful  among  her  tribes,  seated 
on  the  flanks  of  the  Alps,  in  a  country  now  far  less  populous  than  it 
was  then.*  There  however  it  is  that  we  find  great  centres  of  trade 

*  "  Le  Morvan,"  a  territory  containing  a  hundred  and  fifty  square 
leagues,  "  across  which,  but  forty  years  since,  there  was  neither  a  great 
road  nor  a  departmental  road,  nor  even  a  single  local  one  of  any  importance 
in  good  condition.  There  were  no  bridges.  At  the  most,  occasional  trees, 
scarcely  squared,  were  thrown  across  the  streams,  but  most  commonly 
stones  were  disposed  here  and  there  to  facilitate  the  passage  of  the  tra 
veller.  Although  situated  in  the  heart  of  France,  this  country  was  abso 
lutely  impassable  by  the  people  of  the  neighboring  ones — frightful  by 
reason  of  the  cold,  the  snow,  the  character  of  the  soil,  and  the  wildness  of 
its  occupants — a  true  pays  de  loup,  in  which  the  traveller  feared  to  find 
himself  involved.  This  country,  nevertheless,  then  an  integral  portion  of 
the  State  of  the  (Edui,  had  followed  the  progress  of  that  people,  friends  and 
allies  of  the  Romans  and  the  most  civilized  of  all  the  Gauls,  whose  capital, 
Autun,  had  merited  the  title  of  Soror  et  cemula  Romce.  It  was  traversed  by 
fine  military  roads  of  which  we  yet  find  the  remains  in  a  state  of  perfect  pre 
servation.  Antique  medals  are  there  frequently  discovered,  and  widely  dis 
seminated  over  the  country  are  the  ruins  of  ancient  residences,  amid 
which  are  found  the  fragments  of  sculptures  and  of  mosaics,  which  reveal 
to  us  the  magnificence  of  their  ancient  masters.  Their  great  merit  may  be 
appreciated  on  an  examination  of  the  beautiful  mosaic  of  Aulun,  recently 
exhibited  in  Paris  and  London — by  that  of  Villars,  near  to  Chatillon-en- 
Bazois — and  that  of  Chaigneau — in  the  midst  of  the  forests  of  Chastellux. 
The  abundance  and  perfection  of  this  description  of  works  prove  the  exist 
ence  of  great  opulence  and  exquisite  taste,  fruits  of  an  ancient  civilization, 
w^hich  perished  in  barbaric  times,  and  which  modern  civilization  is  far 
from  having  equalled." — Journal  des  Economistes,  December,  1852. 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  ]  27 

in  the  rich  cities  of  Bibracte,  Yienne,  and  Noviodunum — while  the 
now  rich  Belgica  presented  to  view  but  a  single  place  of  any  note; 
and  that  at  the  place  of  passage  of  the  river  Somme,  where  stands 
the  city  of  Amiens.  Still  higher,  amongst  the  Alps  themselves,  we 
see  the  Helvetii,  with  their  dozen  cities  and  near  four  hundred 
villages.  Looking  west,  we  see  in  the  savage  Brittany,  where 
wolves  even  yet  abound,  another  portion  of  the  early  settlers  of 
Gaul,  with  their  wretched  oppidi  placed  upon  rocky  promontories  of 
the  coast,  or  in  the  almost  inaccessible  gorges  of  the  interior 
country.  Everywhere  around,  among  the  highest  and  poorest 
lands,  even  now  are  seen  monuments  of  their  existence,  the  like  of 
which  are  never  found  among  the  lower  and  richer  lands  of  France. 
Seeking  on  the  map  for  the  cities  with  whose  names  we  are  most 
familiar  as  connected  with  the  history  of  that  country  in  the  days 
of  the  founder  of  the  Capetian  race,  of  St.  Louis,  and  of  Philip 
Augustus — Chalons,  St.  Quentin,  Soissons,  Rheims,  Troyes,  Nancy, 
Orleans,  Bourges,  Dijon,  Yienne,  Nismes,  Toulouse,  or  Cahors, 
once  the  great  centre  of  the  banking  operations  of  France — we 
find  them  far  towards  the  heads  of  the  streams  on  which  they  stand, 
or  occupying  the  high  grounds  between  the  rivers.  Looking  next 
for  the  centres  of  power  at  a  later  period,  we  meet  them  in  wild 
and  savage  Brittany,  yet  inhabited  by  a  people  but  little  removed 
from  barbarism — in  Dijon,  at  the  foot  of  the  Alps — in  Auvergne,  but 
recently,  if  not  even  yet,  a  "  secret  and  safe  asylum  of  crime,  amidst 
inaccessible  rocks  and  wilds,  which  nature  seems  to  have  designed 
rather  for  beasts  than  men" — in  the  Limousin,  which  gave  to  the 
church  so  many  popes  that  the  Limousin  cardinals  at  length  were 
almost  enabled  to  dictate  the  proceedings  of  the  Conclave,  and  yet 
is  now  among  the  poorest  parts  of  France — or  on  the  flanks  of  the 
Cevennes,  where  literature  and  art  were  far  advanced  at  a  period 
when  the  richer  soils  of  the  kingdom  remained  uncultivated.* 

*  "  These  men" — the  inhabitants  of  the  country  between  the  Mediterra 
nean,  the  Rhone  and  the  Garonne — "for  the  most  part  vassals  of  the  Count 
of  Toulouse,  were  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  infinitely  more 
civilized  than  those  of  the  rest  of  Gaul.  They  carried  on  a  greater  commerce 
with  the  East,  where  the  signature  of  their  Count  had  greater  credit  than 
the  King  of  France's  seal.  Their  towns  had  a  municipal  organization,  and 
had  even  the  external  appearances  of  the  Italian  republics.  *  *  Their 
literature  was  the  most  refined  in  all  Europe,  and  their  literary  idiom  was 
classical  in  Italy  and  Spain  :  their  Christianity,  ardent  and  even  exalted — 
for  they  were  naturally  impassioned — did  not  consist  in  an  implicit  belief 


128  CHAPTER  IV.  §  6. 

Even  yet,  after  the  lapse  of  so  many  centuries,  its  richest  soils 
remain  undrained — marshy  lands  abounding  throughout  the  king 
dom,  for  the  reclamation  of  which  the  aid  of  government  is  now 
invoked.* 

Turning  next  to  Belgium  we  see  the  rude  and  poor  Luxem 
burg  and  Limburg  to  have  been  cultivated  from  a  period  far 
beyond  the  range  of  history,  while  Flanders,  now  so  rich,  remained 
until  the  seventh  century  an  impenetrable  desert.  As  late  even  as 
the  thirteenth  century,  the  forest  of  Soignies  covered  the  site  of  the 
city  of  Brussels,  and  the  fertile  province  of  Brabant  was  in  a 
great  degree  uncultivated  ;  yet  have  we  but  to  pass  to  the  next 
adjoining  province,  that  of  Antwerp,  to  find,  in  the  now  almost 
abandoned  Campine,  evidences  of  cultivation  dating  back  to  the 
commencement  of  our  era.  There  are  found  the  ancient  city  of 
Heerenthals,  with  its  walls  and  gates — and  Gheel,  which  dates  back 
to  the  seventh  century ;  and  there  the  traveller  passes  over  the 
domain  of  the  Counts  of  Merode,  with  its  castle  of  Westerloo, 
one  of  the  oldest  in  Belgium ;  in  the  ditches  of  which  are  yet  found 
implements  of  war  dating  back  to  the  period  of  the  Romans. 
Everywhere,  the  oldest  villages  are  found  on  the  knolls,  or  in  the 
sand,  near  the  swamps  with  which  the  country  was  once  to  so 
great  an  extent  covered.  The  wool  trade  of  the  country  had  its 
origin  in  the  Campine,  and  it  was  to  the  necessity  for  communica 
tion  between  the  people  of  these  and  other  poor  lands  that  the 
existence  of  many  of  the  towns  and  cities  was  due.  In  the  days 
of  Caesar,  the  site  of  the  present  Maestricht  was  known  only  as 
the  place  of  passage  of  the  Maes — and  that  of  Amiens  was  then  but 
little  more  than  the  place  of  passage  of  the  Somme ;  while  the 
Broecksel  of  a  later  period,  now  Brussels,  came  into  notice  because 
of  being  used  by  those  who  required  to  cross  the  Senne. 

of  the  dogmas,  and  a  mechanical  observance  of  the  practices  of  the  Roman 
church.  *  *  To  stop  this  intellectual  contagion,  nothing  less  was 
necessary  than  to  strike  the  people  collectively,  and  annihilate  the  social 
order  from  which  its  independent  spirit  and  its  civilization  proceeded." 
Hence  the  crusade  against  the  Waldenses,  and  Albigeois,  which  resulted  in 
the  incorporation  of  these  provinces  into  the  Kingdom  of  France,  the  most 
disastrous  event  in  the  history  of  Southern  France.  "  The  old  civilization 
of  these  provinces,"  continues  M.  Thierry,  "  received  a  mortal  blow  from 
their  union  with  countries  less  advanced  in  cultivation,  in  manufactures, 
in  policy,  and  in  taste  for  the  arts." — History  of  the  Conquest  of  England, 
vol.  iii.  p.  324. 

*  Journal  des  Economistes,  Nov.  1855,  p.  210. 


Or  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  129 

In  the  early  history  of  Holland,  we  see  a  miserable  people,  sur 
rounded  by  forests  and  marshes  covering  the  most  fertile  lands — 
but  living  on  islands  of  sand,  and  forced  to  content  themselves 
with  eggs,  fish,  and  very  small  supplies  of  vegetable  food  of  any 
kind.  Their  extreme  poverty  exempted  them  from  the  grinding 
taxation  of  Rome,  and  by  slow  degrees  they  increased  in  numbers 
and  in  wealth.  Chief  among  the  provinces,  however,  from  an  early 
period,  was  the  narrow  district  lying  between  Utrecht  and  the  sea, 
which  eventually  gave  its  name  Haupt,  or  headland,  to  the 
entire  region — and  there  it  is  we  find  the  poorest  soil,  capable  of 
yielding  little  beside  bent,  or  fern.  Unable  by  means  of  agricul 
ture  to  obtain  food,  the  Dutch  sought  it  from  manufactures  and 
trade.  Wealth  and  population  continued  to  grow,  and  with  their 
growth  came  the  clearing  of  woods,  the  draining  of  marshes,  and 
the  subjection  to  cultivation  of  the  rich  soils  in  the  outset  so  much 
avoided ;  until  at  length  we  find  in  it  the  richest  nation  of  Europe. 

§  7.  Further  north,  we  meet  a  people  whose  ancestors  passed 
from  the  neighborhood  of  the  Don,  through  the  rich  plains  of 
Northern  Germany,  and  finally  selected  for  themselves  the  barren 
mountains  of  the  Scandinavian  peninsula — as  the  land  best  suited 
for  them  in  their  then  existing  condition.*  Poor  as  was  the 

*  The  philosophy  of  this  is  thus  most  accurately  exhibited  by  one  of  the 
best  travellers  of  our  time,  a  gentleman  who  has  given  much  attention  to 
every  portion  of  the  Scandinavian  Peninsula.  "  What  could  have  induced 
a  migratory  population  from  the  Tanais  (the  Don),  on  which  traditionary 
history  fixes  their  original  seat,  after  reaching  the  southern  shores  of  the 
Baltic,  to  have  turned  to  the  north  and  crossed  the  sea  to  establish  them 
selves  on  bleak,  inhospitable  rocks,  and  in  the  severe  climate  of  Scandina 
via,  instead  of  overspreading  the  finer  countries  on  the  south  side  of  the 
Baltic  f  *  *  *  We  make  a  wrong  estimate  of  the  comparative 
facilities  of  subsisting,  in  the  early  ages  of  mankind,  in  the  northern  and 
southern  countries  of  Europe.  If  a  tribe  of  red  men  from  the  forests  of 
America  had  been  suddenly  transported  in  the  days  of  Tacitus  to  the 
forests  of  Europe  beyond  the  Rhine,  where  would  they,  in  what  is  called  the 
hunter  state,  that  is,  depending  for  subsistence  on  the  spontaneous  pro 
ductions  of  nature,  have  found  in  the  greatest  abundance  the  means  and 
facilities  of  subsisting  themselves  ?  Unquestionably  on  the  Scandinavian 
peninsula,  intersected  by  narrow  inlets  of  the  sea  teeming  with  fish,  by 
lakes  and  rivers  rich  in  fish,  and  in  a  land  covered  with  forests,  in  which 
not  only  all  the  animals  of  Europe  that  are  food  for  man  abound,  but  from 
the  numerous  lakes,  rivers,  ponds,  and  precipices  in  this. hunting  field,  are 
to  be  got  at  and  caught  with  much  greater  facility  than  on  the  boundless 
plains,  on  which,  from  the  Rhine  to  the  Elbe,  and  from  the  Elbe  to  the 
Vistula,  or  to  the  steppes  of  Asia,  to  hem  in  a  herd  of  wild  animals  in  their 
flight." — Laing,  Chronicles  of  the  Sea  Kings,  Introductory  Dissertation,  p.  39. 


130  CHAPTER  IV.  §  T. 

general  character  of  the  soil,  the  poorest  portions  of  it  were  those 
first  settled.  Everywhere  throughout  the  country  is  found  a 
repetition  of  the  facts  already  described  in  regard  to  Scotland — the 
marks  of  early  agriculture  being  found  on  high  and  poor  lands 
that  long  since  have  been  abandoned.  To  such  an  extent  has  this 
been  the  case,  that  it  has  afforded  countenance  to  the  belief  that 
the  peninsula  must  really  have  been  the  seat  of  the  great  "  North 
ern  Hive,"  the  overflow  from  which  had  peopled  Southern  Europe 
— it  having  been  supposed  that  no  one  would  have  cultivated  these 
very  poor  soils  when  it  rested  with  himself  to  select  for  his  use  the 
very  rich  ones  that,  according  to  M.  Ricardo,  are  always  first 
selected  for  occupation.  The  facts  here  observed  are,  however, 
only  a  repetition  of  those  we  see  to  have  occurred  in  North  and 
South  America,  in  England,  Scotland,  France,  and  Belgium. 

Looking  next  to  Russia,  we  find  a  recurrence  of  the  same  great 
fact.*  "Almost  everwhere,"  says  a  recent  English  traveller,  "we 
see  the  poorest  soil  selected  for  cultivation,  whilst  that  of  the  rich 
est  description  remains  neglected  in  its  vicinity;  for  the  poorer 
soil  is  generally  the  higher  ground,  which  requires  no  trouble  in 
draining.  "•(• 

In  Germany,  according  to  Tacitus,  "but  a  small  part  of  the  open 
and  level  country  was  occupied ;"  the  natives  dwelling  "chiefly  in 
forests,  or  on  the  summit  of  that  continuous  ridge  of  mountains  by 
which  Suevia  is  divided  and  separated  from  other  tribes  that  lie  still 
more  remote.  "J  Looking  now  to  the  country  watered  by  the 
Danube  and  its  tributaries,  we  see  the  population  abounding  at  the 
heads  of  the  streams,  but  gradually  diminishing  as  we  descend  the 
great  river,  until  at  length  reaching  the  richest  lands,  we  find 
them  entirely  unoccupied.  Pausing  for  a  moment  in  Hungary,  we 
see  in  "  the  Puszta"  the  cradle,  or  rather,  as  we  are  told  by  a 
recent  traveller,  "  the  keep  of  Hungarian  nationality" — and  here 

*  "  The  government  of  Pskow  occupies  the  ninth  place  in  regard  to  its 
relative  extent  of  arable  land,  whilst,  in  consequence  of  the  bad  quality  of 
its  soil,  it  is  one  of  the  poorest  in  regard  to  its  productive  forces.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  governments  of  Podolia,  Saratow,  and  Wolhynia,  which  are 
the  most  fertile  portions  of  the  empire,  occupy  a  rank  far  inferior  to  many 
others,  in  regard  to  their  extent  of  cultivated  land." — Tegoborski's  Russia, 
vol.  i.  p.  131. 

I  Revelations  of  Russia,  vol.  i.  p.  355. 

i  Manners  of  the  Germans,  chap,  xliii. 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  131 

we  have  a  wide  plain  extending  from  the  Theiss  to  the  Danube,  con 
taining  15,000  square  miles — consisting  of  a  series  of  sandhills 
that  roll  away  like  waves,  until  earth  and  sky  are  blended  together.* 

Beyond  the  Theiss,  rich  lands  abound,  exhibiting  no  signs  of  life 
except  "countless  flocks  of  wild  birds,  cranes,  and  ducks,  and 
divers,  among  the  reeds — there,  on  a  bank,  a  vulture  tearing  some 
carrion  to  pieces ;  and  now  and  then  the  bold  eagle  or  the  hawk 
flying  heavily  by,  scarcely  any  of  these  stirring  at  our  approach.  A 
lonely,  desolate  scene  enough,  but  a  part  of  those  immense  marshy 
districts  in  Hungary  whose  drainage,  under  an  efficient  agriculture, 
would  reclaim  so  much  good  land ;  and  which  are  now  the  causes 
of  such  deadly  fevers  and  diseases."! 

Looking  into  Italy,  we  see  a  numerous  population  in  the  high 
lands  of  Cisalpine  Gaul,  at  a  period  when  the  rich  soils  of  Yenetia 
were  unoccupied.  Passing  southward,  along  the  flanks  of  the 
Apennines,  we  find  a  gradually  increasing  population,  with  an  in 
creasing  tendency  to  the  cultivation  of  the  better  soils;  and  towns 
whose  age  may  almost  be  inferred  from  their  situation.  The  Sam- 
nite  hills  were  peopled,  Etruria  was  occupied,  and  Yeii  and  Alba 
were  built,  before  Romulus  gathered  together  his  adventurers  on 

*  "  The  expanse,  in  truth,  resembles  the  great  ocean  solidified.  Mile  after 
mile  it  stretches  away  in  a  dull,  depressing  uniformity,  unbroken  by  a  vil 
lage,  a  house,  or  a  tree.  Indeed,  the  name  by  which  the  plain  is  known — 
the  Puszta — means  " empty  or  "void ;"  and  it  is  well  described  by  its  name. 
It  is  bare,  naked,  and  desolate,  and  destitute  even  of  a  stream  of  water. 
Here  and  there  the  long  pole  of  a  draw-well  rises  against  the  sky,  like  a 
spectral  arm;  or  like  the  mast  of  a  stranded  ship.  Occasionally  a  herd  of 
cattle  strays  along  in  search  of  herbage,  watched  by  mountain  herdsmen. 
The  only  other  sign  of  life  is  a  solitary  crane  or  stork,  perched  on  one  leg, 
amidst  a  bog  white  with  the  powder  of  soda  ;  or  a  vulture  wheeling  high 
in  the  air  in  search  of  prey.  A  profound  silence  rests  on  the  plain  ;  and 
when  broken  by  the  herdsman's  voice,  or  the  bellowing  of  the  cattle,  the 
sound  startles  the  ear,  as  it  speeds,  one  knows  not  whence,  on  the  wings 
of  the  wind.  *  *  Its  denizens  are  pure  and  unadulterated  Hun 
garians  ;  the  same  men  as  the  Magyars,  when,  a  thousand  years  ago,  they 
wandered  away  in  search  of  "  fresh  fields  and  pastures  new,"  from  the  plains 
of  distant  Asia.  Every  man  is  a  horseman,  and  every  one  is  able  and  ready 
to  become  a  soldier  in  defence  of  his  country.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
Puszta  are  herdsmen,  following  great  droves  of  horses,  buffaloes,  snow-white 
bullocks,  sheep,  and  swine,  from  pasture  to  pasture ;  and  remaining  the 
whole  year  round  beneath  the  canopy  of  heaven.  The  wildest  amongst 
them  are  the  swineherds,  and  their  greatest  distinction  is  to  be  a  redoubt 
able  fighter.  They  are  pre-eminently  the  heroes  of  the  plain.  Even  their 
very  pleasures  are  warlike  and  sangtiinary." 

f  Thrace's  Letters  on  Hungary,  N.  12. 


132  CHAPTER  IV.   §  7. 

the  banks  of  the  Tiber;  and  Aquileia  filled  a  place  in  Roman  his 
tory  that  was  denied  to  the  site  of  the  modern  Pisa. 

In  the  island  of  Corsica  there  are  three  distinct  regions;  on  the 
lower  one  of  which  the  sugar-cane,  the  cotton-plant,  tobacco,  and 
even  indigo  could  be  grown;  and  it  might  be  made,  as  we  are  told, 
"the  India  of  the  Mediterranean."*  The  second  "represents  the 
climate  of  Burgundy,  Morvan,  and  Bretagne,  in  France,"  all  of 
which  latter  the  reader  has  seen  to  have  been  the  seats  of  early 
settlement;  and  here  it  is,  accordingly,  that  "the  greater  part  of 
the  Corsicans  live  in  scattered  hamlets  on  the  mountain  side,  or  in 
the  valleys. "f  Looking  next  to  Sicily,  we  learn  that  "  the  natives 
seem  to  have  been  of  rude  pastoral  habits,  dispersed  either  among 
petty  hill-villages,  or  in  caverns  hewn  out  of  the  rock,  like  the 
primitive  inhabitants  of  the  Balearic  islands  and  Sardinia;"!  and 
yet,  of  all  the  islands  of  the  Mediterranean,  none  so  much  abounded 
in  those  rich  soils  which,  according  to  M.  Ricardo,  should  have 
been  first  appropriated. 

Turning  now  to  Greece,  we  meet  the  same  great  and  universal 
fact.  Earliest  amongst  the  settlements  were  those  of  the  hills  of 
Arcadia,  which  long  preceded  those  on  the  lands  of  Elis  watered  by 
the  Alpheus;  and  the  meagre  soil  of  Attica,  whose  poverty  was  such 
as  to  have  been  assigned  as  a  reason  why  it  had  escaped  the  deso 
lating  presence  of  invaders  of  early  ages,  was  among  the  earliest 
occupied ;  while  the  fat  Boaotia  followed  slowly  in  its  rear.  On  the 
hill-tops,  in  various  quarters,  the  sites  of  deserted  cities  presented, 
in  the  historical  times  of  Greece,  evidences  of  former  occupation§ 
and  cultivation.  The  short,  steep  slope  of  eastern  Argolis  was 
early  abandoned  as  incapable  of  yielding  a  return  to  labor,  yet 
there  was  the  seat  of  "the  Halls  of  Tiryns,"  and  there  now  are 
found  the  ruins  of  the  palace  of  Agamemnon,  and  of  the  Acropolis 
of  Mycena3.  The  place  of  the  city,  as  we  are  told  by  Aristotle, 
"  was  chosen  because  the  lower  part  of  the  plain  was  then  so 
marshy  as  to  be  unproductive ;"  whereas,  in  his  own  time,  or 
almost  eight  centuries  afterwards,  the  plain  of  Mycenae  had  become 
barren,  and  that  of  Argos  well  drained  and  fertile.  ||  North  of  the 

*   Gregorovius's  Corsica,  p.  143.  \  Ibid.,  p.  144. 

J  Grote.  History  of  Greece,  vol.  iii.  368. 
§  Grote.  History  of  Greece,  vol.  ii.  108. 
II  Leake.  Travels  in  the  Morea,  vol.  ii.  366. 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  133 

Gulf  of  Corinth,  we  see  the  Phocians,  the  Locrians,  and  the 
Etolians,  clustered  together  on  the  highest  and  poorest  lands; 
while  the  rich  plains  of  Thessaly  and  of  Thrace  remained  almost 
entirely  unpeopled. 

Crossing  the  Mediterranean  we  see  the  mountainous  and  rocky 
Crete  to  have  been  occupied  from  the  earliest  ages,  while  the 
Delta  of  the  Nile  remained  a  wilderness.  Ascending  that  river, 
cultivation  becomes  more  and  more  ancient  as  we  rise,  until  at 
length  far  towards  its  head  we  reach  Thebes,  the  first  capital  of 
Egypt.  With  the  growth  of  population  and  of  wealth  we  find  the 
city  of  Memphis  becoming  the  capital  of  the  kingdom  ;  but  still 
later,  the  Delta  is  occupied,  and  towns  and  cities  rise  in  places  that 
to  the  earlier  kings  were  inaccessible — and  with  every  step  in  this 
direction  there  was  increased  return  to  labor. 

Turning  eastward  from  the  Nile,  we  see  the  most  civilized  por 
tion  of  the  people  of  Northern  Africa  clustering  round  the  mountains 
of  the  Atlas,  while  the  richer  lands  in  the  direction  of  the  coast 
remain  in  a  state  of  nature.  Looking  next  south,  the  Capital  of 
Abyssinia  is  found  at  an  elevation  of  no  less  than  8,000  feet  above 
the  sea,  while  lands  of  unbounded  capability  remain  entirely  unculti 
vated.  Everywhere  throughout  Africa,  the  greatest  amount  of 
population  and  of  wealth,  and  the  nearest  approach  to  civilization, 
are  found  on  the  elevated  table  lands  whose  natural  drainage  fits 
them  for  early  occupation — while  everywhere  on  the  rich  lands, 
towards  the  mouths  of  the  great  streams,  population  is  small,  and 
man  is  found  in  the  lowest  state  of  barbarism. 

§  8.  Passing  by  the  Red  Sea  and  entering  the  Pacific,  we  see 
almost  innumerable  islands  whose  lower  lands  are  unoccupied, 
their  superior  richness  rendering  them  dangerous  to  life ;  while 
population  clusters  round  the  hills.  Farther  south,  are  rich  valleys 
in  Australia,  uninhabited,  or,  where  inhabited  at  all,  it  is  by  a  peo 
ple  standing  lowest  among  the  human  race  ;  while  on  the  little  high- 
pointed  islands  of  the  coast,  but  a  few  miles  distant,  are  found  a 
superior  race,  with  houses,  cultivation,  and  manufactures.  Turn 
ing  our  steps  northward,  towards  India,  we  meet  Ceylon,  in  the 
centre  of  which  are  found  the  dominions  of  the  king  of  Candy, 
whose  subjects  have  the  same  aversion  to  the  low  and  rich  lands, 
unhealthy  in  their  present  state,  that  is  felt  by  the  people  of 


134  CHAPTER  IV.   §  T. 

Mexico  and  of  Java.  Entering  India  by  Cape  Coraorin,  and  fol 
lowing  the  great  range  oft  high  lands,  the  back-bone  of  the 
peninsula,  we  find  the  cities  of  Seringapatam,  Poonah,  and  Ahmed- 
nugger;  while  below,  near  the  coast,  are  seen  the  European  cities 
of  Madras,  Calcutta  and  Bombay,  the  creation  of  a  very  recent 
day.  Intermediate  between  the  two,  are  seen  numerous  cities, 
whose  positions,  sometimes  far  away  from  the  banks  of  the  rivers, 
and  at  other  times  near  their  sources,  show  that  the  most  fertile 
lands  have  not  been  those  first  cultivated.  Standing  on  the  high 
lands  between  Calcutta  and  Bombay,  we  have  on  the  one  hand  the 
delta  of  the  Indus,  and  on  the  other  that  of  the  magnificent  Gan 
ges.  Through  hundreds  of  miles  the  former  rolls  its  course,  almost 
without  a  settlement  on  its  banks;  while  on  the  higher  country, 
right  and  left,  exists  a  numerous  population.  The  rich  Delta  of 
the  latter  is  unoccupied,  and  if  we  desire  to  find  the  seat  of  early 
cultivation  we  must  follow  its  course  until  far  up  towards  its  head, 
we  meet  Delhi,  the  capital  of  all  India  while  yet  the  government 
remained  in  the  hands  of  its  native  sovereigns.  Here,  as  every 
where,  man  avoids  the  low  rich  soils  that  need  clearing  and  drain 
age,  and  seeks  in  the  higher  lands  that  drain  themselves,  the  means 
of  employing  his  labor  in  the  search  for  food — and  here,  as  always 
when  the  superficial  soil  alone  is  cultivated,  the  return  to  labor 
is  small.  Hence  it  is  that  we  find  the  Hindoo  working  for  a 
rupee,  or  two,  per  month  ;  sufficient  only  to  give  him  a  handful  of 
rice  per  day,  and  to  purchase  a  rag  of  cotton  cloth  with  which  to 
cover  his  loins.  The  most  fertile  soils  exist  in  unlimited  quantity 
on  land  that  is  untouched ;  and  close  to  that  which  the  laborer 
scratches  with  a  stick  for  want  of  a  spade,  raking  his  harvest  with 
his  hands  for  want  of  a  reaping  hook,  and  carrying  home  upon 
his  shoulders  the  miserable  crop,  for  want  of  a  horse  and  a  cart. 

Passing  northward,  by  Caubul  and  Affghanistan,  and  leaving  on 
our  left  the  barren  Persia,  whose  weak  dry  soils  have  been  culti 
vated  through  a  long  series  of  ages,  we  attain  the  highest  point  of 
the  earth's  surface ;  and  here,  even  among  the  Himalayas  them 
selves,  we  find  the  same  order  of  cultivation — the  villages  being 
everywhere  placed  upon  slopes  upon  which  their  people  grow 
scanty  crops  of  millet,  maize,  and  buckwheat ;  while  the  bottom 
lands  are  generally  a  mass  of  jungle,  unappropriated  and  unculti- 


OF  THE  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH.  135 

vated.*  Immediately  around  is  the  cradle  of  the  human  race, 
where  head  the  streams  that  empty  into  the  Frozen  Ocean  and  the 
Bay  of  Bengal,  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Pacific.  It  is  the  land, 
of  all  others,  suited  to  the  purpose  ;  that  which  will  most  readily 
afford  to  the  man  who  works  without  a  spade  or  an  axe,  a  small 
supply  of  food — and  therefore  the  one  least  fitted  for  his  uses  when 
he  has  acquired  power  to  direct  the  forces  of  nature  to  his  service. 
Here  we  are  surrounded  by  man  in  a  state  of  barbarism ;  and 
standing  here,  we  may  trace  the  course  of  successive  tribes  and 
nations  passing  towards  the  lower  and  more  productive  lands;  but 
compelled  in  all  cases  to  seek  the  route  least  disturbed  with  water 
courses — and  therefore  keeping  the  ridge  that  divides  the  waters  of 
the  Black  Sea  and  the  Mediterranean  from  those  of  the  Baltic. 
Standing  here  we  may  mark  them,  as  they  descend  the  slope, 
sometimes  stopping  for  the  purpose  of  cultivating  the  hilly  land 
that  can,  with  their  indifferent  machinery,  be  made  to  yield  a 
small  supply  of  food  ;  at  others  marching  on  and  reaching  the 
neighborhood  of  the  sea,  there  to  place  themselves,  not  on  the 
rich  lands,  but  on  the  poor  soils  of  the  steep  hill-side — those  on 
which  water  cannot  stand  to  give  nourishment  to  trees,  or  to  afford 
annoyance  to  settlers  whose  means  are  inadequate  to  the  draining 
of  marshes  and  of  swamps  ;  or  on  little  peaked  islands,  from  which 
the  water  passes  rapidly,  as  is  the  case  with  those  of  the  ^Egean, 
cultivated  from  so  early  a  period.  Some  of  these  tribes  are  seen 
reaching  the  Mediterranean,  where  civilization  is  first  found,  and 
soonest  lost  under  the  pressure  of  successive  waves  of  emigration  ; 
while  others  are  passing  farther  west,  and  entering  Italy,  France, 
and  Spain.  Others,  more  adventurous,  reach  the  British  isles. 
Again,  after  a  few  centuries  of  rest,  we  see  them  crossing  the 
broad  Atlantic,  and  commencing  the  ascent  of  the  slope  of  the 
Alleghany,  preparatory  to  the  ascent  and  passage  of  the  great 
range  dividing  the  waters  of  the  Pacific  from  those  of  the  Atlantic  ; 
and  in  all  cases  we  mark  the  pioneers  gladly  seizing  on  the  clear 
dry  land  of  the  steep  hill-side,  in  preference  to  the  rich  and  highly 
wooded  land  of  the  river  bottoms.  Everywhere  we  see  them,  as 
population  gradually  increases,  descending  the  sides  of  the  hills 
and  mountains  towards  the  rich  lands  at  their  feet ;  and  every- 

*  See  Hookas  Himalayan  Journals. 


136  CHAPTER  IV.  §  7. 

where,  with  the  growth  of  numbers,  penetrating  the  earth  to  reach 
the  lower  soils,  to  enable  them  to  combine  the  upper  clay,  or  sand, 
with  the  lower  marl,  or  lime — and  thus  to  compound  for  themselves, 
out  of  the  various  materials  with  which  they  have  been  provided 
by  the  Deity,  a  soil  capable  of  yielding  a  larger  return  than  that 
.upon  which  they  were  at  first  compelled  to  expend  their  labor. 
/  Everywhere,  with  increased  power  of  union,  we  see  them  exercising 
increased  power  over  land.  Everywhere,  as  the  new  soils  are 
brought  into  activity,  and  as  their  occupants  are  enabled  to  obtain 
larger  returns,  we  find  more  rapid  increase  of  population,  produ 
cing  increased  tendency  to  combination  of  exertion,  by  help  of 
which  their  powers  are  trebled,  quadrupled,  and  quintupled,  and 
sometimes  fifty-fold  increased  ;  enabling  them  better  to  provide  for 
their  immediate  wants,  while  accumulating  more  rapidly  the  ma 
chinery  by  means  of  which  further  to  increase  their  power  of  pro 
duction,  and  still  more  fully  to  bring  to  light  the  vast  treasures  of 
nature.  Everywhere,  we  find  that  with  increasing  population  the 
^supply  of  food  becomes  more  abundant  and  regular,  and  clothing 
and  shelter  are  obtained  with  greater  ease — famine  and  pestilence 
tend  to  pass  away — health  becomes  more  universal — life  becomes 
more  and  more  prolonged — and  man  becomes  more  happy  and  more 
free. 

In  regard  to  all  the  wants  of  man,  except  the  single  and  impor 
tant  one  of  food,  such  is  admitted  to  be  the  case.  It  is  seen  that 
with  the  growth  of  population  and  of  wealth  men  obtain  water,  and 
iron,  and  coal,  and  clothing— and  the  use  of  houses,  and  ships,  and 
roads — in  return  for  less  labor  than  had  been  at  first  required.  It 
is  not  doubted  that  the  gigantic  works  by  means  of  which  great 
rivers  are  carried  through  our  cities,  enable  men  to  obtain  water 
at  smaller  cost  than  was  required  when  each  man  took  a  bucket  and 
helped  himself  on  the  river  bank.  It  is  seen  that  the  shaft  which 
has  required  years  to  sink,  and  to  discharge  the  water  from  which 
the  most  powerful  engines  are  required,  supplies  fuel  at  far  less 
cost  of  labor  than  has  been  required  when  the  early  settlers 
carried  home  the  scraps  of  half-decomposed  timber,  for  want  of  an 
axe  with  which  to  cut  the  already  fallen  log — that  the  grist-mill 
converts  the  grain  into  flour  more  cheaply  than  was  the  case  when 
it  was  pounded  between  stones — and  that  the  gigantic  factory  sup 
plies  cloth  more  cheaply  than  the  little  loom  ;  but  it  is  denied 


OP   THE   OCCUPATION   OP   THE   EARTH.  13 f 

that  such  is  the  case  in  reference  to  the  soils  required  for  cultiva 
tion.  In  regard  to  every  thing  else,  man  commences  with  the 
worst  machinery  and  proceeds  upward  towards  the  best;  but 
in  regard  to  land,  and  that  alone,  he  commences,  ac£ordingvlo 
Mr.  Kicardo,  with  the  best  and  proceeds  downward  towards  the 
worst ;  and  with  every  stage  of  his  progress  finds  a  decreasing 
return  to  labor,  threatening  starvation,  and  admonishing  him 
against  raising  children  to  aid  him  in  his  age ;  lest  they  should 
imitate  the  conduct  of  the  people  of  India  and  of  the  islands  of 
the  Pacific, —  where  land,  however,  is  abundant  and  food  should 
be  cheap, —  and  bury  him  alive  or  expose  him  on  the  river  shore, 
that  they  may  divide  among  themselves  his  modicum  of  food. 

How  far  all  this  is  so  the  reader  will  now  determine  for  himself. 
All  others  of  the  laws  of  nature  are  broad  and  universally  true, 
and  he  may  now  agree  with  us  in  believing  that  there  is  one  law, 
and  one  alone,  for  food,  light,  air,  clothing,  and  fuel — that  man, 
in  all  and  every  case,  commences  with  the  worst  machinery  and 
proceeds  onward  to  the  best — and  that  he  is  thus  enabled,  with 
the  growth  of  wealth,  of  population,  and  of  the  power  of  asso 
ciation,  to  obtain  with  constantly  diminishing  labor  an  increased 
supply  of  all  the  necessaries,  conveniences,  comforts,  and  luxuries 
of  life. 

In  further  proof,  if  proof  can  yet  be  required,  it  may  be  men 
tioned  that  almost  everywhere  tradition  carries  back  the  early 
settlement  of  the  various  portions  of  the  world  to  the  higher 
lands.  The  traditions  of  the  Chinese  place  their  ancestors  at 
the  heads  of  the  great  rivers,  in  the  high  table-lands  of  Asia. 
The  Brahmins  derive  their  origin  from  the  Yale  of  Cashmere, 
and  throughout  Asia  that  region  is  recognised  by  a  term  equiva 
lent  to  that  of  "the  roof  of  the  world."  The  name  of  Abram, 
father  of  the  high  land,  became  in  time  Abraham,  father  of  a 
multitude ;  and  the  Northmen  placed  the  city  of  Odin  in  Aas- 
gard,  or  the  castle  of  Aas,  —  "which  word,"  says  Mr.  Laing, 
"still  remains  in  the  Northern  languages,  signifying  a  ridge  of 
high  land."* 

Again :  rivers  never,  as  we  are  told  by  Agassiz,  establish  a 
line  of  separation  between  terrestrial  animals  ;  and  it  is  as  a  con 
sequence  of  this  that  "the  watersheds,  not  the  rivers,"  are  " found 
*  Chronicle  of  the  Sea  Bangs,  Saga  1. 

YOL.  I.— 10 


138  CHAPTER  IV.    §  4. 

to  constitute  the  demarcations  of  an  accurate  ethnographical 
map."*  Were  it  possible  that  man  could  commence  the  work 
of  cultivation  on  rich  bottom  lands,  such  would  not  be  the  case  ; 
because  as  population  and  wealth  increased  he  would  find  him 
self  irresistibly  impelled  towards  the  higher  and  poorer  lands,  as 
here  is  shown : 


Mr.  Ricardo  places  his  early  settlers  at  the  point  marked  B, 
being  that  at  which  the  lands  are  richest ;  and  where  the  natural 
advantages  of  situation  are  greatest,  because  of  the  proximity  of 
the  river.  As  their  numbers  increase,  they  must  ascend  the  hill, 
or  fly  to  some  other  valley,  there  to  resume  their  labors.  Directly 
the  reverse  of  this,  as  the  reader  has  seen,  is  what  has  occurred 
in  every  quarter  of  the  world  —  the  work  of  cultivation  having 
everywhere  been  commenced  on  the  sides  of  the  hills,  marked  A, 
where  the  soil  was  poorest,  and  where  the  natural  advantages  of 
situation  were  the  least.  With  the  growth  of  wealth  and  popu 
lation,  men  have  been  seen  descending  from  the  high  lands  bound 
ing  the  valley  on  either  side,  and  coming  together  at  their  feet. 
[Hence  it  is  that  rivers  are  never  found  to  be  the  dividing  lines  of 
J  races  of  animals  or  of  nations. 

The  doctrine  of  Mr.  Ricardo  is  that  of  increasing  dispersion 
and  weakness  ;  whereas  under  the  real  laws  of  nature  there  is  a 
tendency  towards  a  constant  increase  of  that  power  of  association 
and  combination  to  which  alone  man  is  indebted  for  the  ability 
to  subjugate  the  more  productive  soils.  As  he  descends  the 
hills  and  meets  his  neighbor  man,  efforts  are  combined,  employ 
ments  are  divided,  individual  faculties  are  stimulated  into  action, 
property  becomes  more  and  more  divided,  equality  grows,  com 
merce  becomes  enlarged,  and  person  and  property  become  more 
secure ;  and  every  step  in  this  direction  is  but  preparation  for 
further  progress. 

*  Edinburgh  Review,  January,  1851 :  article,  Devon  and  Cornwall. 


OF   THE   OCCUPATION   OF   THE   EAETH.  189 


CHAPTER    Y. 

THE   SAME   SUBJECT   CONTINUED. 

§  1.  POPULATION  and  wealth  tend  to  increase,  and  cultivation 
tends  towards  the  more  fertile  soils,  when  man  is  allowed  to  obey 
those  instincts  of  his  nature  which  prompt  him  to  seek  association 
with  his  fellow-men.  They  tend  to  decrease  as  association  de 
clines,  and  then  the  fertile  soils  are  everywhere  abandoned ;  and 
with  every  step  in  that  direction  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  food 
is  increased.  Population  it  is  that  makes  the  food  come  from 
the  rich  soils  of  the  earth  j  while  depopulation  drives  the  unhappy 
cultivator  back  to  the  poorer  ones. 

When  men  are  poor,  they  are  compelled  to  select  such  soils  as 
they  can  cultivate,  not  such  as  they  would.  Although  gathered 
around  the  sides  of  the  same  mountain  range,  the  difficulty  of 
obtaining  food  compels  them  to  remain  far  distant  from  each 
other;  and  having  no  roads,  they  are  unable  to  associate  for 
self-defence.  The  thin  soils  yield  small  returns,  and  the  little 
tribe  embraces  some  who  would  prefer  to  live  by  the  labor  of 
others  rather  than  by  their  own.  The  scattered  people  may  be 
plundered  with  ease,  and  half  a  dozen  men,  combined  for  the 
purpose,  may  rob  in  succession  all  the  persons  of  whom  the  little 
community  is  composed.  The  opportunity  makes  the  robber, 
and  the  most  daring  among  them  becomes  the  leader  of  the  band. 
One  by  one,  the  people  who  would  desire  to  live  by  their  own 
labor  are  plundered ;  and  thus  are  they  who  prefer  the  work  of 
plunder  enabled  to  pass  their  time  in  dissipation.  The  leader 
divides  the  spoil,  and  with  its  help  is  enabled  to  augment  the 
number  of  his  followers,  and  thus  to  enlarge  the  sphere  of  his 
depredations.  With  the  gradual  increase  of  the  little  commu 
nity,  he  is  led,  however,  to  commute  with  them  for  a  certain 
share  of  their  produce,  which  he  calls  rent^  or  tax,  or  taille. 
Population  and  wealth  grow  very  slowly,  because  of  the  large 


140  CHAPTER   V.    §  1. 

proportion  which  the  non-laborers  bear  to  the  laborers.  The 
good  soils  are  but  slowly  improved,  because  the  people  are  un 
able  to  obtain  spades  with  which  to  cultivate  the  land,  or  axes 
by  help  of  which  to  clear  it.  Few  want  leather,  and  there  is  no 
tanner  on  the  spot  to  use  their  hides.  Few  can  afford  shoes,  and 
there  is  no  shoemaker  to  eat  their  corn,  while  making  those  which 
are  required.  Few  have  horses,  and  there  is  no  blacksmith. 
-J  Combination  of  effort  has  scarcely  an  existence. 

By  very  slow  degrees,  however,  they  are  enabled  to  reduce  to 
cultivation  better  lands,  thus  lessening  the  distance  between 
themselves  and  the  neighboring  settlement,  where  rules  another 
little  sovereign.  Each  chief,  however,  now  covets  the  power  of 
taxing  the  subjects  of  his  neighbor,  and,  as  a  consequence,  war 
ensues  —  the  object  of  both  being  plunder,  but  disguised  under 
the  name  of  ' '  glory. ' '  Each  invades  the  domain  of  the  other, 
and  each  endeavors  to  weaken  his  opponent  by  murdering  his 
rent-payers,  burning  their  houses,  and  wasting  their  little  farms ; 
while  manifesting,  perhaps,  the  utmost  courtesy  to  the  chief  him 
self.  The  richer  lands  are  now  abandoned,  and  their  drains  fill 
up,  while  the  tenants  are  forced  to  seek  for  food  among  the  poor 
soils  of  the  hills  to  which  they  have  fled  for  safety.  At  the  end 
of  a  year  or  two,  peace  is  made,  and  the  work  of  clearing  has 
again  to  be  performed.  Population  and  wealth  having,  how 
ever,  diminished,  the  means  of  recommencing  the  work  have 
now  again  to  be  created, —  and  that,  too,  under  the  most  dis 
advantageous  circumstances.  With  continued  peace,  the  work 
advances,  and,  after  a  few  years,  population,  wealth,  and  cul 
tivation  regain  the  point  from  which  they  had  fallen.  New 
wars,  however,  ensue,  for  the  determination  of  the  question  : 
Which  of  the  two  chiefs  shall  collect  all  the  (so-called)  rent  ? 
After  great  waste  of  life  #nd  property,  one  of  them  being 
slain,  the  other  falls  his  heir,  having  thus  acquired  both  plun 
der  and  glory.  He  now  wants  a  title,  by  which  to  be  distin 
guished  from  those  by  whom  he  is  surrounded.  He  is  a  little 
king ;  and  as  similar  operations  are  performed  elsewhere,  such 
kings  become  numerous.  Population  extending  itself,  and  each 
little  sovereign  now  coveting  the  dominions  of  his  neighbors, 
new  wars  are  made,  and  always  with  the  same  result— the 
people  invariably  flying  to  their  hills  for  safety — the  best  lands 


OF   THE   OCCUPATION   OF   THE   EARTH.  141 

being  abandoned — food  becoming  more  scarce  —  and  famine  and 
pestilence  sweeping  off  those  whose  flight  had  preserved  them 
from  "the  tender  mercies"  of  the  invading  force. 

Small  kings  now  becoming  great  ones,  find  themselves  sur 
rounded  by  lesser  chiefs,  who  glorify  themselves  in  the  number  of 
their  murders  and  in  the  amount  of  plunder  they  have  acquired. 
Counts,  viscounts,  earls,  marquises,  and  dukes  next  make  their 
appearance  on  the  stage,  heirs  of  the  power  and  of  the  rights  of 
the  robber  chiefs  of  early  days.  Population  and  wealth  go  back 
ward,  and  the  love  of  title  grows  with  the  growth  of  barbarism.  * 
Wars  are  now  made  on  a  larger  scale,  and  greater  "  glory"  is 
acquired.  In  the  midst  of  distant  and  highly  fertile  lands,  occu 
pied  by  a  numerous  population,  are  rich  cities,  whose  people, 
unused  to  arms,  maybe  robbed  with  impunity  —  always  an  im 
portant  consideration  to  those  with  whom  the  pursuit  of  glory  is 
a  trade.  Provinces  are  laid  waste,  and  the  population  is  exter 
minated  ;  or,  if  a  few  escape,  they  fly  to  the  hills  and  mountains, 
there  to  perish  of  famine.  Peace  follows,  after  years  of  destruc 
tion,  but  the  rich  lands  are  overgrown  ;  the  spades  and  axes,  the 
cattle  and  the  sheep,  are  gone ;  the  houses  are  destroyed ;  their 
owners  have  ceased  to  exist ;  and  a  long  period  of  abstinence 
from  the  work  of  desolation  is  required  to  regain  the  point  from 
which  cultivation  had  been  driven  by  men  intent  upon  the  grati 
fication  of  their  own  selfish  desires,  at  the  cost  of  the  welfare  and 
happiness  of  the  people  over  whose  destinies  they  have  so  unhap 
pily  ruled.  Population  grows  again  slowly,  and  wealth  but  little 
more  rapidly,  for  almost  ceaseless  wars  have  impaired  the  dispo 
sition  and  the  respect  for  honest  labor  —  while  the  necessity  for 
beginning  once  more  the  work  of  cultivation  on  the  poor  soils 

*  It  is  interesting  to  trace  with  each  step  in  the  progress  of  the  decay  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  the  gradual  increase  in  the  magnificence  of  titles  ;  and 
so  again  with  the  decline  of  modern  Italy.  In  France,  they  became  almost 
universal  as  the  wars  of  religion  barbarized  theipeople.  The  high-sounding 
titles  of  the  East  are  in  keeping  with  the  weakness  of  those  by  whom  they 
are  assumed,  as  are  the  endless  names  of  the  Spanish  grandee  with  the 
poverty  of  the  soil  cultivated  by  his  dependants.  The  time  is  probably 
approaching  when  men  of  real  dignity  will  reject  the  whole  system  as  an 
absurdity,  and  when  small  men  alone  will  think  themselves  elevated  by  the 
title  of  Esquire,  Honorable,  Baron,  Marquis,  or  Duke.  Extremes  always 
meet.  The  son  of  the  duke  rejoices  in  the  possession  of  half  a  dozen  Chris 
tian  names,  and  the  little  retailer  of  tea  and  sugar  calls  his  daughter 
Amanda  Malvina  Fitzallan — Smith,  or  Pratt ;  while  the  gentleman  calls  his 
son  Robert,  or  John. 


142  CHAPTER   V.    §  2. 

adds  to  the  distaste  for  labor.  Swords  or  muskets  are  now  held 
to  be  more  honorable  implements  than  spades  and  pickaxes ;  and 
the  habit  of  union  for  any  honest  purpose  being  almost  extinct, 
thousands  are  ready,  at  any  moment,  to  join  in  expeditions  in 
search  of  plunder.  War  thus  feeds  itself  by  producing  poverty, 
depopulation,  and  the  abandonment  of  the  most  fertile  soils ; 
while  peace  also  feeds  itself  by  increasing  the  number  of  men  and 
the  habit  of  association,  because  of  the  constantly  increasing 
power  to  draw  supplies  of  food  from  the  surface  already  occu 
pied,  as  the  almost  boundless  powers  of  the  earth  are  developed 
in  the  progress  of  population  and  of  wealth. 

§  2.  The  views  above  given  are  not  in  accordance  with  the 
doctrine  of  Mr.  Ricardo,  yet,  look  where  we  may,  there  is  fur 
nished  evidence  of  their  truth.  If  to  India,  we  may  see  the  rich 
soil  everywhere  relapsing  into  jungle,  while  its  late  occupant 
starves  among  the  forts  of  the  hills.  In  hither  Asia  we  see  the 
country  washed  by  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates  —  a  land  of 
unbounded  fertility,  and  one  that  in  times  long  past  maintained 
the  most  powerful  communities  in  the  world — now  so  utterly 
abandoned,  that  Mr.  Layard  found  himself  compelled  to  seek  the 
land  of  the  hills  when  he  desired  to  find  a  people  at  home. 
Hence  it  is  that  ague  and  fever,  the  constant  concomitants  of 
wild  and  uncultivated  lands,  are  found  to  be  the  universal 
scourge  of  Eastern  travel. 

Coming  west,  we  see  the  high  lands  of  Armenia  to  be  so 
well  occupied  as  to  give  occasion  to  the  continued  existence  of 
a  city  like  that  of  Erzeroum ;  while  around  the  ancient  Sinope 
nothing  is  to  be  seen  but  forests  of  timber,  whose  gigantic  size 
affords  proof  conclusive  of  the  fertile  character  of  the  soil  in 
which  they  grow.  Passing  farther  west,  and  arriving  in  Con 
stantinople,  we  find  the  great  valley  of  Buyukdere  —  once  known 
as  "the  fair  land" — totally  abandoned,  while  the  city  is  sup 
plied  with  food  for  its  daily  consumption  from  the  hills  forty  or 
fifty  miles  distant ;  and  the  picture  there  presented  is  but  an 
exhibition  in  miniature  of  the  whole  Turkish  empire.  The  rich 
lands  of  the  Lower  Danube,  once  the  busy  the'atre  of  Roman  life 
and  industry,  furnish  now  but  a  miserable  subsistence  to  a  few 
Servian  swineherds  and  Wallachian  peasants.  Throughout  the 


OP   THE   OCCUPATION   OF   THE   EARTH.  143 

Ionian  Islands  the  richest  lands,  once  in  a  state  of  high  cultiva 
tion,  are  now  almost  entirely  abandoned ;  and  must  so  continue 
until  there  can  be  again  exhibited  that  habit  of  association  which 
enables  man  to  combine  with  his  fellow-man  for  the  subjugation 
of  nature. 

Coming  now  to  Africa,  we  may  trace  the  increase  of  that  habit, 
and  the  growth  of  that  power,  in  the  gradual  descent  of  population 
towards  the  Nile  —  bringing  into  activity  the  rich  lands  of  the 
Delta  ;  and  with  their  decline,  the  abandonment  of  those  lands, 
the  filling  up  of  the  canals,  and  the  concentration  of  the  popula 
tion  on  the  higher  and  less  productive  soils.  Passing  thence  to 
the  Roman  province,  we  see  the  rich  lands  of  the  olden  time  — 
the  plains  of  the  Metidja,  of  Bona,  and  others  —  almost,  even 
when  not  quite,  abandoned  ;  while  the  yet  remaining  population 
clusters  around  the  mountains  of  the  Atlas.  Looking  next  to 
Italy,  we  see  a  growing  people  subduing  to  cultivation  the  rich 
lands  of  the  Campagna  and  of  Latium,  to  be  again  gradually 
abandoned  —  and  now  affording  miserable  subsistence  to  men, 
many  of  whom  go  clothed  in  skins  of  beasts — and  whose  number 
but  little  exceeds  that  of  the  cities  which  once  flourished  there. 
Passing  north,  we  may  see  the  rich  lands  of  the  Siennese  repub 
lic  in  cultivation  until  the  sixteenth  century,  when  the  ferocious 
Marignan  drove  to  the  hills  the  small  remnant  of  the  population 
that  escaped  the  sword — and  gave  to  the  world  a  pestilential  de 
sert,  in  lieu  of  the  highly  cultivated  farms  that  before  abounded. 
Farther  north  may  be  seen  the  destruction  of  the  canals  of  Pisa 
and  the  abandonment  of  its  fertile  soils,  while  its  inhabitants 
perish  by  pestilence  within  the  city  walls — or  transfer  themselves 
to  the  head  of  the  Arno,  to  seek  there  the  subsistence  no  longer 
afforded  by  the  richer  lands  near  its  mouth. 

In  France,  in  the  days  of  the  English  wars,  we  see  the  lower 
and  richer  countries  ravaged  by  bands  of  fierce  mountaineers  — 
the  wild  Breton,  the  ferocious  Gascon,  and  the  mercenary  Swiss  — 
united  for  the  plunder  of  the  men  who  cultivated  the  more  fertile 
soils  —  and  driving  them  to  seek  refuge  in  the  wild  and  savage 
Brittany  itself.  We  may  see  the  richest  lands  of  the  kingdom 
rendered  utterly  desolate  —  la  Beauce,  one  of  its  most  fertile  por 
tions,  becoming  again  a  forest  —  while  from  Picardyto  the  Rhine 
not  a  house,  unprotected  by  city  walls,  is  left  standing,  nor  a  farm 


144  CHAPTER  V.    §  3. 

that  is  not  stripped.  In  later  times,  Lorraine  was  reduced  to  a 
desert — and  fine  forests  but  recently  stood  where  formerly  the 
richer  soils  yielded  liberal  returns  to  labor.  Throughout  France 
we  witness  the  effects  of  perpetual  war,  in  the  concentration  of 
the  whole  agricultural  population  in  villages,  at  a  distance  from 
the  lands  they  cultivate — there  inhaling  a  foul  atmosphere,  and 
losing  half  their  time  in  transferring  themselves,  their  rude 
implements,  and  their  products,  to  and  from  their  little  proper 
ties  ;  whereas  the  same  labor  bestowed  upon  the  land  itself  would 
give  to  cultivation  the  richer  soils. 

§  3.  Crossing  the  Atlantic,  we  find  further  evidence  of  the  fact 
that  as  population  everywhere  brings  the  food  from  the  rich  soils, 
so  depopulation  everywhere  drives  men  back  to  the  poor  ones. 
In  the  days  of  Cortes,  the  valley  of  Mexico  afforded  food  for  a 
numerous  people,  but  it  is  now  in  a  state  of  desolation — its  canals 
choked  up  and  its  cultivation  abandoned ;  while,  from  the  poorer 
lands  that  border  it,  strings  of  mules  bring,  from  a  distance  of  fifty 
miles,  the  provisions  by  which  the  people  of  the  city  are  now 
supplied. 

Passing  north  and  arriving  in  the  United  States,  we  find  fur 
ther  illustration  of  the  law,  that  to  enable  men  to  pass  from  the 
cultivation  of  the  poor  to  the  rich  lands  there  must  be  a  growing 
habit  of  association,  consequent  upon  diversification  in  the  modes 
of  employment,  and  development  of  their  various  individualities. 
The  State  of  Yirginia  once  stood  at  the  head  of  the  Union,  but 
the  policy  she  has  advocated  has  tended  to  the  exhaustion  of  the 
lands  first  cultivated  and  to  the  abandonment  of  her  soil — the  con 
sequences  of  which  are  seen  in  the  constantly  increasing  unhealthi- 
ness  of  the  parts  first  occupied — the  lower  counties  of  the  State. 
"  The  entire  country,"  says  a  recent  writer,  "is  full  of  the  ruins 
of  gentlemen's  mansions  —  some  of  them  palatial  in  size  —  and 
noble  old  churches,  whose  solid  walls  were  built  of  imported 
brick,  but  which  could  not  hold  the  builders.  And  as  for  their 
descendants,"  as  he  asks,  "where  are  they?  The  splendor, 
indeed,  which  filled  all  the  counties  of  Lower  Yirginia  has 
departed.  Why  ?  Because  the  whole  country  is  miasmatic,  and 
is  suffered  to  remain  so.  It  is  dangerous  for  whites  to  spend  the 
sickly  season  there ;  and  all,  accordingly,  who  can,  abandon 


OF   THE   OCCUPATION   OF   THE   EARTH.  145 

their  homes  in  August  and  September,  to  seek  a  more  healthful 
location. 

"  This  miasmatic  region  covers  all  the  sea-coast  of  Virginia, 
North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Florida,  Alabama, 
Mississippi,  and  Louisiana,  except  occasionally  an  isolated  spot ; 
and  extends  inland  from  ten  to  a  hundred  miles.  It  is  so  bad  in 
the  vicinity  of  Charleston,  that  it  is  death  to  sleep  a  single  night 
outside  of  the  city  ;  and  even  riding  across  the  infected  district  in 
the  night,  on  the  railroad,  has  caused  all  the  passengers  to  vomit 
like  a  sea-sick  company  on  shipboard." 

As  a  consequence  of  this,  Yirginia  and  Carolina  are  steadily 
declining  in  their  position  in  the  Union ;  and  so  must  continue  to 
do,  until  increase  in  the  power  of  association  shall  enable  them  to 
cultivate  their  richest  lands. — Looking  to  Jamaica,  we  see  the 
same  great  fact  as  a  result  of  the  selfsame  cause —  a  recent  return 
of  the  property  on  the  island  showing  that  no  less  than  128 
sugar  estates  have  been  totally,  while  71  have  been  partially, 
abandoned.  If  to  these  be  added  the  coffee  and  other  estates 
wholly  or  partially  so,  the  number  amounts  to  413  —  embracing 
an  area  of  more  than  four  hundred  thousand  acres. 

Abandonment  of  the  soil  by  a  portion  of  its  inhabitants,  brings 
with  it,  necessarily,  a  diminution  of  the  power  of  combination  for 
the  maintenance  of  drains  that  are  required  for  the  preservation 
of  health  —  and  for  the  construction  and  support  of  roads  ;  and 
as  the  burdens  increase,  the  disposition  to  fly  from  the  land  is 
seen  augmenting  from  year  to  year.  The  purely  agricultural 
country  must  export  raw  produce  and  must  exhaust  its  soil ; 
and  such  export  must  bring  with  it  a  necessity  for  the  export 
of  man  —  followed  by  constant  decline  in  the  power  of  associa 
tion,  in  the  development  of  individuality,  in  the  ability  to  main 
tain  commerce,  and  in  the  position  of  the  community  among  the 
communities  of  the  world.  That  such  is  the  case  is  proved  by 
the  experience  of  all  antiquity;  and  if  we  would  see  it  fully 
established  in  modern  times,  we  have  but  to  turn  our  eyes  to 
Portugal,  Ireland,  and  Turkey  in  the  Eastern  hemisphere,  and 
Jamaica,  Carolina,  and  Yirginia  in  the  Western  one. 

Whenever  population  and  wealth,  and  the  consequent  power 
of  combination,  are  permitted  to  increase,  there  arises  a  tendency 
towards  the  abandonment  of  the  poor  lands  first  cultivated ;  as  is 


146  CHAPTER   V.    §3. 

proved  by  the  experience  of  France,  England,  Scotland,  Sweden, 
and  several  of  our  Northern  States.  Whenever,  on  the  contrary, 
population,  wealth,  and  the  power  of  association  decline,  it  is  the 
rich  soil  that  is  abandoned  by  men  who  fly  again  to  poor  ones,  in 
hopes  to  find  in  their  cultivation  the  means  of  subsistence  for  their 
\  ^families  and  themselves.  With  every  step  in  the  former  direc 
tion,  there  is  an  increase  in  the  value  of  man  and  a  decline  in 
that  of  all  the  commodities  required  for  his  use,  accompanied  by 
growing  facility  of  accumulation  ;  whereas  with  every  movement 
in  the  latter  one,  he  becomes  more  and  more  the  slave  of  nature 
and  of  his  fellow-man,  with  constant  increase  in  the  value  of  com 
modities,  and  as  constant  decline  in  his  own. 


OF   VALUE.  141 


CHAPTER    VI. 

OF   VALUE. 

§  1.  WITH  the  growth  of  numbers  and  increase  in  the  power 
of  association,  man  is  everywhere  seen  passing  from  the  cultiva 
tion  of  the  poor  to  that  of  the  richer  soils — from  being  the  slave 
of  nature  towards  becoming  her  absolute  master,  and  compelling 
her  to  do  his  bidding  —  from  a  state  of  weakness  towards  one  of 
strength  —  from  being  a  mere  creature  of  necessity  towards 
becoming  a  being  of  power  —  from  poverty  to  wealth  —  and  now 
possessed  of  numerous  objects  to  which  he  attaches  the  idea  of 
VALUE.  Why  he  does  so,  and  how  he  is  accustomed  to  measure 
value,  we  may  now  examine. 

Our  Crusoe,  on  his  island,  found  himself  surrounded  by  fruits, 
flowers,  and  animals  of  various  descriptions — some  of  them  more, 
and  others  less,  calculated  to  supply  his  wants  ;  but  nearly  all  of 
them  beyond  the  reach  of  his  unassisted  forces.  The  hare  and 
the  goat  so  far  excelled  him  in  speed,  that  he  could  have  no  hope 
for  success  in  the  chase  while  dependent  on  his  legs  alone.  The 
bird  could  soar  in  the  air,  while  he  was  chained  to  earth.  The 
fish  could  sink  at  once  into  the  deep  water,  where,  if  he  at 
tempted  to  follow,  he  would  surely  perish ;  and  he  might  die  of 
hunger  in  the  sight  of  endless  quantities  of  the  rnate^jals  of  food, 
while  the  fly  and  the  ant  were  rejoicing  in  the  superabundance 
of  their  supplies.  The  tree  would  furnish  him  with  a  house,  had 
he  an  axe  with  which  to  fell  it ;  or  a  saw  with  which  to  convert  it 
into  planks.  Destitute  of  these  implements,  he  finds  himself 
compelled  to  occupy  a  hole  in  the  earth,  always  damp  and 
always  exposed  to  the  wind  ;  while  the  humble-bee  is  enabled  to 
provide  for  herself  the  most  perfect  habitation. 

Inferior  to  all  other  beings  in  the  physical  qualities  required 
for  self-preservation — and  in  the  instinct  which  prompts  them  to 


148  CHAPTER  VI.    §  1. 

the  use  of  the  faculties  with  which  they  have  been  endowed — he 
is  greatly  their  superior  in  the  fact  that  he  has  been  gifted  with 
intelligence  to  appreciate  the  natural  forces  by  which  he  is  sur 
rounded  ;  and  with  a  hand  to  enable  him  to  carry  into  effect  the 
ideas  suggested  by  his  brain.  If  a  stone  can  be  made  to  strike 
a  bird,  gravitation,  as  he  sees,  will  bring  the  latter  within  his 
reach.  The  elasticity  of  wood  enables  him,  after  repeated  efforts, 
to  detach  a  branch  from  the  tree,  and  next  its  qualities  of  weight 
and  hardness  are  brought  into  activity  as  he  fells  to  the  ground 
wild  animals  of  strength  greatly  superior  to  his  own.  Having 
thus  learned  the  existence  of  elasticity,  he  bends  a  piece  of  wood, 
and  next  the  tenacity  of  animal  fibre  is  brought  into  action  as  he 
converts  it  into  a  cord,  by  the  help  of  which  he  completes  a  bow. 
He  makes  a  canoe,  by  aid  of  which  he  is  enabled  to  float  upon  the 
waters,  and  to  pass  from  point  to  point  in  pursuit  of  game  ;  and 
thus,  step  by  step,  he  is  seen  obtaining  power  over  various  forces 
always  existing  in  nature,  and  waiting  only  his  call  to  enlist 
themselves  in  his  service.  With  each  he  finds  a  diminution  in 
the  labor  required  for  enabling  him  to  obtain  the  food,  the  cloth 
ing,  and  the  shelter  by  means  of  which  his  physical  powers  are 
sustained  and  invigorated,  while  his  mental  ones  become  more 
and  more  developed. 

Working,  in  the  early  days  of  his  sojourn  on  the  island,  with  his 
hands  alone,  he  was  compelled  to  depend  upon  the  fruits  spontane 
ously  yielded  by  the  earth— to  obtain  a  sufficient  supply  of  which 
required  almost  unceasing  exertion  in  wandering  over  extensive 
surfaces  of  land.  Obtaining  occasionally  a  little  animal  food,  he 
attached  to  it  a  high  degree  of  value  —  knowing  well  how  great 
he  had  uniformly  found  to  be  the  obstacles  standing  in  the  way 
of  its  attainment — and  here  it  is  we  find  the  cause  of  the  exist 
ence  in  the  human  mind  of  the  idea  of  value,  which  is  simply  our 
'  estimate  of  the  resistance  to  be  overcome,  before  we  can  enter  upon 
v  the  possession  of  the  thing  desired.  That  resistance  diminishes 
with  every  increase  in  the  power  of  man  to  command  the  always 
gratuitous  services  of  nature  ;  and  hence  it  is  that  we  see  in  all 
advancing  communities  a  steady  increase  in  the  value  of  labor 
when  measured  by  commodities,  and  decline  in  that  of  commodi 
ties  when  measured  by  labor. 

In  the  outset,  vegetable  food  could  be  had  in  return  for  less 


OF    VALUE.  149 

exertion  than  was  required  for  obtaining  animal  food ;  but 
with  the  possession  of  the  bow  a  supply  of  meat  can  now  be 
obtained  with  less  effort  than  would  be  required  for  one  of  fruit. 
At  once  there  is  a  change  of  value  —  birds  and  rabbits  falling  as 
compared  with  fruits,  and  the  latter  rising  as  compared  with  the 
former.  Fish,  however,  are  still  unattainable,  although  abound- 
*  ing  in  the  sea  around  him ;  and  he  would  give,  perhaps,  half  a 
dozen  rabbits  for  a  single  perch.  His  inventive  faculties  are  now 
stimulated  by  the  desire  for  change  of  diet,  while  the  increased 
facility  of  obtaining  supplies  of  food  enables  him  to  devote  more 
time  to  the  improvement  of  machinery  by  help  of  which  to  com 
mand  the  services  of  nature.  Converting  a  bone  into  a  hook,  he 
attaches  it  to  a  cord  similar  to  the  one  he  had  used  in  making  a 
bow,  and  is  now  enabled  to  obtain  fish  at  even  less-  cost  of  labor 
than  would  be  required  for  similar  supplies  of  other  kinds  of  food. 
At  once  the  former  declines  in  value  as  compared  with  the  latter, 
and  the  latter  rises  as  compared  with  the  former  ;  but  man  rises 
in  value  as  compared  with  all,  because  of  the  command  he  has 
obtained  over  the  various  natural  forces.  At  first,  his  whole  day 
had  scarcely  sufficed  to  afford  indifferent  supplies  of  the  least  nou 
rishing  food ;  but  now,  aided  by  nature,  he  obtains  it  in  abun 
dance,  and  at  the  cost  of  only  half  his  time  —  leaving  him  the 
remainder  to  be  applied  to  the  making  of  clothing,  the  improve 
ment  of  his  habitation,  and  the  preparation  of  machinery  required 
for  further  enlargement  of  his  powers. 

With  every  step  in  this  direction,  there  is  a  diminution  in  the 
value  of  all  previously  accumulated  machinery,  because  of  the 
steady  diminution  in  the  cost  of  reproduction,  as  nature  is  more 
and  more  forced  to  labor  in  the  service  of  man.  In  the  outset,  it 
was  with  difficulty  he  could  obtain  a  cord  with  which  to  make  a 
bow — but  now  the  bow  itself  enables  him  readily  to  obtain  birds 
and  rabbits  that  furnish  him  with  cords  to  a  greater  extent  than 
are  required  for  his  purposes  ;  and  thus  is  the  bow  itself  a  cause 
of  depreciation  in  its  own  value.  So  it  is  everywhere.  The  coal 
enables  us  more  readily  to  obtain  supplies  of  iron  ore,  with  dimi 
nution  in  the  value  of  iron ;  and  the  iron  enables  us  to  obtain 
larger  supplies  of  coal,  with  constant  decline  in  the  value  of  fuel, 
and  increase  in  the  value  of  man. 

Profiting  by  his  leisure,  Crusoe  now  avails  himself  of  the  service? 


150  CHAPTER   VI.    §  1. 

of  the  canoe  to  extend  his  knowledge  of  the  coast,  and  in  one  of  his 
expeditions  discovers  on  a  distant  part  of  the  island  another  per 
son  similarly  situated ;  except  that  in  some  directions  he  has 
acquired  more,  and  in  others  less,  power  over  nature  than  him 
self.  The  latter  has  no  boat,  but  his  arrows  are  better,  as  he  has 
been  enabled  to  avail  himself  of  the  weight  and  hardness  of  the 
flint  with  which  he  arms  them ;  and  can,  therefore,  kill  more  birds 
or  rabbits  in  a  day  than  Crusoe  could  do  in  a  week.  Their  value 
in  his  eyes  is,  therefore,  less,  but  that  of  fish  is  far  greater,  because 
of  the  greater  difficulties  to  be  overcome  before  a  supply  can  be 
obtained.  Here  we  have  the  circumstances  preliminary  to  the 
establishment  of  a  system  of  exchanges.  The  first  could  obtain 
more  meat  in  a  day,  by  the  indirect  process  of  catching  fish  to  be 
exchanged  with  his  neighbor,  than  he  could  in  a  week  with  his  inef 
ficient  bow  and  arrows  ;  and  the  second  could  obtain  more  fish  by 
the  devotion  of  a  day  to  the  shooting  of  birds  than  he  could  in  a 
month  while  deprived  of  the  hook  and  line ;  and  by  the  process 
of  exchange  the  labor  of  both  may  be  rendered  more  productive. 
Each,  however  —  seeking  to  give  day's  labor  for  day's  labor  — 
refuses  to  permit  the  other  to  obtain  a  greater  amount  of 
service  than  he  gives  in  return.  The  one  has  fish  of  various 
kinds — some  requiring  more  and  others  less  time  to  capture  them 
—  and  he  values  each  in  reference  to  the  resistance  he  has  had 
to  overcome  in  obtaining  it ;  for  which  reason  he  regards  a  single 
rockfish  as  the  equivalent  of  half  a  dozen  perch.  The  other  has 
animal  food  of  various  kinds ;  and  he,  in  like  manner,  regards  a 
turkey  as  the  equivalent  of  half  a  dozen  rabbits.  Yalue  in 
exchange  is,  therefore,  determined  by  precisely  the  same  rules  that 
had  governed  each  of  the  parties  when  working  by  himself. 

What,  now,  is  their  position  as  compared  with  that  in  which 
they  previously  had  been  ?  Both  have  profited  by  calling  to  their 
aid  certain  natural  forces,  by  help  of  which  their  labor  has  been 
lightened  while  its  results  have  largely  increased ;  and  the  whole 
of  that  increase  they  have  retained  for  themselves — nature  asking 
no  compensation  for  her  services.  Again  ;  both  having  profited 
by  their  power  to  combine  their  efforts  for  the  improvement  of 
their  common  condition,  each  is  now  enabled  to  devote  himself 
with  less  interruption  to  the  particular  pursuits  for  which  he  finds 
himself  most  fitted — with  steady  tendency  to  increase  in  the  return 


or  VALUE.  151 

to  labor  as  individuality  becomes  more  and  more  developed. 
With  both  there  is  an  increase  in  the  time  that  may  be  appropri 
ated  to  the  improvement  of  machinery  to  be  used  in  aid  of  further 
production ;  and  thus  does  every  step  towards  obtaining  the  com 
mand  of  nature  prove  to  be  merely  the  precursor  of  a  new  and 
greater  one.  Had  our  islander,  instead  of  finding  a  neighbor, 
been  so  fortunate  as  to  obtain  a  wife,  a  similar  system  of  exchange 
would  have  been  established.  He  would  follow  the  chase,  and  she 
would  cook  the  meat  and  convert  the  skins  into  clothing.  He 
would  raise  the  flax,  and  she  would  convert  it  into  cloth.  The 
family  becoming  numerous,  one  would  cultivate  the  earth,  while  a 
second  would  supply  the  animal  food  necessary  for  their  support ; 
and  a  third  would  be  engaged  in  the  management  of  the  house 
hold,  in  the  preparation  of  food,  and  in  the  manufacture  of  cloth 
ing.  Here  would  be  a  system  of  exchanges  as  complete,  so  far  as 
it  went,  as  that  of  the  largest  city. 

§  2.  The  idea  of  comparison  is  inseparably  connected  with 
that  of  value.  We  estimate  a  deer  as  worth  the  labor  of  a 
week,  and  a  hare  at  that  of  a  day ;  i.  e.  we  should  be  willing  to 
give  that  quantity  of  labor  for  them.  The  sole  inhabitant  of 
an  island  has  thus  his  system  of  exchange  established,  with  a 
measure  of  value  precisely  similar  to  that  in  use  among  the  vari 
ous  members  of  a  large  community.  When  joined  by  another 
person,  exchanges  arise  between  them,  and  are  governed  by  the 
same  laws  as  when  performed  among  nations  whose  numbers 
count  by  millions. 

In  measuring  value,  the  first  and  most  natural  idea  is  to  com 
pare  the  commodities  produced  with  the  resistance  that  has  been 
required  to  be  overcome  in  order  that  they  might  be  obtained — 
or  in  other  words,  with  the  labor  of  body  and  mind  that  has  been 
given  for  them.  In  exchanging,  the  most  obvious  mode  is  to  give 
labor  for  labor.  The  land  of  A  yields  more  fruit  than  he  can 
use,  and  that  of  B  more  potatoes.  Neither  possesses  any  value 
in  its  present  state,  and  either  party  may  appropriate  the  one  or 
the  other,  at  his  pleasure.  It  being  most  convenient  for  each  to 
gather  that  which  is  nearest  to  him,  each  is  willing  that  the  other 
should  thus  work  for  him,  receiving  work  in  return.  Each,  how 
ever,  desiring  to  have  as  large  a  quantity  as  he  could  himself 


152  CHAPTER   VI.    §  2. 

obtain  with  the  same  amount  of  effort,  watches  carefully  that  he 
does  not  give  more  labor  than  he  receives. 

Our  colonists,  having  thus  established  between  them  a  system 
of  exchanges,  desire,  of  course,  to  obtain  the  best  aids  to  labor 
that  are  within  their  reach ;  and  it  soon  becomes  obvious  to  them 
that  in  the  clearing  of  lands,  the  building  of  houses,  and  in  almost 
every  species  of  employment,  they  would  be  greatly  assisted  by 
the  possession  of  an  axe,  or  some  species  of  cutting  instrument. 
Having  no  iron,  they  are  compelled  to  avail  themselves  of  such 
substitute  as  is  at  their  command  —  flint  or  other  hard  stone ; 
and  of  this  they  at  length  succeed  in  making  an  instrument, 
which,  though  very  rude,  so  materially  aids  their  operations, 
that  they  now  build  a  house  in  half  the  time  that  had  been 
required  to  construct  the  first.  This  produces  an  immediate 
change  in  the  value  of  all  previously  existing  articles  in  the 
production  of  which  an  axe  can  be  of  service.  The  boat  that 
had  cost  the  labor  of  a  whole  year  can  now  be  reproduced  in  half 
that  time ;  and  as  much  fuel  as  had  cost  a  fortnight's  labor  can 
now  be  cut  in  a  week.  No  further  improvement  having  yet  taken 
place  in  the  mode  of  taking  deer  or  fish,  their  value,  in  labor, 
remains  unchanged.  If,  now,  one  of  the  parties  has  more  fish 
than  he  requires,  while  the  other  has  a  surplus  of  fuel,  the  latter 
is  required  to  give  twice  as  much  as  he  would  have  done  before 
the  axes  were  made  ;  because  he  can  now  reproduce  that  quantity 
with  the  same  amount  of  effort  that  previously  would  have  been 
required  for  half  of  it. 

All  previously  existing  accumulations,  in  the  form  of  houses, 
boats,  or  fuel,  now  exchange  for  only  the  quantity  of  labor 
required  for  their  reproduction,  so  that  the  acquisition  of  the  axe 
—  by  means  of  which  they  had  been  enabled  to  command  the  ser 
vices  of  nature — has  increased  the  value  of  labor  when  estimated 
in  houses  or  fuel,  and  lessened  the  value  of  houses  and  fuel  when 
estimated  in  labor.  The  cost  of  production  has  ceased  to  be  the 
measure  of  value,  the  cost  at  which  they  can  be  reproduced  hav 
ing  fallen.  The  fall,  however,  having  been  occasioned  by  the 
improvement  in  the  means  of  applying  labor,  the  present  values 
will  continue  until  further  changes  are  effected.  The  more  slowly 
such  improvements  are  made,  the  more  steady  is  the  value  of 
property  as  compared  with  labor ;  and  the  more  rapidly  they  are 


OP   VALUE.  153 

made,  the  more  rapid  is  the  growth  of  the  power  of  accumulation, 
and  the  decline  in  the  value  of  all  existing  machinery  when  mea 
sured  by  labor. 

In  this  state  of  things,  let  us  suppose  a  vessel  to  arrive,  the 
master  of  which  desires  supplies  of  fruit,  fish,  or  meat,  for  which 
he  offers  axes,  or  muskets,  in  exchange.  Our  colonists,  valuing  the 
commodities  they  have  to  part  with  by  the  amount  of  labor  they 
have  cost  to  produce,  or  by  the  quantity  necessary  for  their  repro 
duction — the  fruit  at  less  than  potatoes,  and  hares  and  rabbits  at 
less  than  deer  —  will  not  give  the  produce  of  five  days'  labor  in 
venison,  if  they  can  obtain  what  they  require  for  potatoes  that 
could  be  obtained  in  exchange  for  that  of  four. 

In  estimating  the  value  of  the  commodities  offered  to  them  in 
exchange,  they  will  pursue  a  course  exactly  similar  —  measuring 
the  amount  of  difficulty  standing  in  the  way  of  obtaining  them  by 
any  other  process.  It  has  cost  them  the  labor  of  months  to  make 
a  rude  axe,  and  if  they  can  obtain  a  good  one  at  similar  cost,  it 
will  be  more  advantageous  to  do  so  than  to  employ  the  same 
time  in  the  production  of  another  similar  to  the  one  they  already 
have.  Such  instruments,  however,  they  can  make  for  themselves 
—  but  muskets  they  cannot ;  and  they  will  attach  more  value  to 
the  possession  of  a  single  musket,  than  to  that  of  several  axes. 
They  might  give  the  provisions  obtained  by  the  labor  of  several 
months  for  the  one ;  but  they  would  be  willing  to  give  all  the 
accumulations  of  a  year  for  the  other. 

Let  us  suppose  that  each  is  enabled  to  supply  himself  with  a 
musket  and  an  axe,  and  examine  the  effect.  Both  parties  being 
exactly  equal  —  each  possessing  the  same  machinery — their  labor 
would  be  of  equal  value,  and  the  average  produce  of  a  day  of 
the  one  would  continue  to  exchange  for  that  of  a  day  of  the  other. 

The  house  that  had  cost,  at  first,  the  labor  of  a  year,  could  be 
reproduced,  with  the  assistance  of  the  first  rude  axe,  by  that  of 
half  a  year ;  but  a  similar  one  might  now  be  built  in  a  month.  It 
is,  however,  so  inferior  to  those  that  can  now  be  constructed,  that 
it  is  abandoned,  and  ceases  to  have  any  value  whatsoever.  It 
will  not,  perhaps,  command  the  efforts  of  a  single  day.  The  first 
axe  in  like  manner  declines  in  value.  The  increased  capital  of 
the  community  has  thus  been  attended  with  a  diminution  in  the 
value  of  all  that  had  been  accumulated  previously  to  the  ship's 

VOL.  I.— 11 


154  CHAPTER   VI.    §  2. 

arrival ;  while  that  of  labor,  as  compared  with  houses,  has  risen — 
two  months  now  providing  shelter  vastly  superior  to  that  which 
had  been  at  first  obtained  in  exchange  for  that  of  twelve. 

The  value  of  the  provisions  that  had  been  accumulated  expe 
riences  a  similar  fall.  A  week's  labor  of  a  man  armed  with  a 
musket  is  more  productive  of  venison  than  that  of  months  with 
out  its  aid ;  and  the  value  of  the  existing  stock  is  measured  by 
the  effort  required  for  its  reproduction — and  not  by  what  its  pro 
duction  had  cost.  Labor  being  now  aided  by  intellect,  a  smaller 
quantity  of  muscular  exertion  is  required  for  the  production  of  a 
given  effect. 

In  mere  brute  force,  a  man  is  equal  to  the  traction  of  200 
pounds  at  an  uniform  rate  of  four  miles  an  hour — whereas  a  horse 
can  draw  1800  at  a  similar  rate ;  and,  therefore,  of  men  unaided 
by  intellect  it  requires  no  less  than  nine  to  equal  a  single  horse. 
Intelligence,  however,  enables  him  to  master  the  horse  ;  and  now, 
adding  the  powers  of  the  latter  to  his  own,  he  can  move  ten  times 
as  great  a  weight,  while  the  quantity  of  labor  required  for  obtain 
ing  food  to  keep  in  operation  this  increased  amount  of  muscular 
effort  is  not  even  doubled.  With  further  knowledge  he  obtains 
the  command  of  the  wonderful  power  of  steam ;  and  now,  with 
the  help  of  half  a  dozen  men  to  furnish  fuel,  he  controls  a  power 
equal  to  hundreds  of  horses,  or  thousands  of  men.  The  force  by 
which  this  labor  is  accomplished,  is  in  THE  MAN  ;  and,  as  that 
force  is  brought  to  bear 'upon  the  matter  by  which  he  is  sur 
rounded,  the  value  of  his  labors  is  increased,  with  constant 
increase  in  his  power  of  further  progress.  The  master  of  the 
vessel  obtained  for  an  axe,  produced  by  a  mechanic  in  a  single 
day,  provisions  that  had  required  months  for  their  collection  and 
preservation,  because  the  labors  of  the  mechanic  had  been  aided 
by  intelligence  ;  whereas  the  poor  and  lonely  settlers  were,  almost 
altogether,  dependent  upon  that  quality  in  which  they  were  excelled 
by  the  horse  and  many  other  animals — mere  brute  force. 

Throughout  the  operations  of  the  world  the  result  is  the  same. 
The  savage  gives  skins,  the  product  of  many  months  of  exertion, 
for  a  few  beads,  a  knife,  a  musket,  and  a  little  powder.  The  peo 
ple  of  Poland  give  wheat,  produced  by  the  labor  of  months,  for 
clothing  produced  by  that  of  a  few  days,  assisted  by  capital  in 
the  form  of  machinery,  and  the  intellect  required  to  guide  it. 


OF    VALUE.  155 

Those  of  India  give  a  year's  labor  for  as  much  clothing  or  provi 
sions  as  could  be  had  in  the  United  States  for  that  of  a  month. 
The  people  of  Italy  give  a  year's  exertions  for  less  than  those  of 
England  obtain  in  half  a  year.  The  mechanic,  aided  by  his 
knowledge  of  his  trade,  obtains  in  a  single  week  as  much  as  the 
laborer  can  earn  in  two  ;  and  the  dealer  in  merchandise,  who  has 
devoted  his  time  to  obtaining  a  thorough  knowledge  of  his  busi 
ness,  gains  in  a  month  as  much  as  his  neighbor,  less  skilled  in  it, 
can  do  in  a  year. 

In  order  that  quantity  of  labor  may  be  a  measure  of  value, 
there  must  be  an  equal  power  to  command  the  services  of  nature. 
The  product  of  two  carpenters  in  New  York  or  Philadelphia  can 
generally  be  exchanged  for  that  of  two  masons ;  and  that  of  two 
shoemakers  will  not  vary  much  in  value  from  that  of  two  tailors. 
The  time  of  a  laborer  in  Boston  is  nearly  equal  in  value  to  that 
of  another  in  Pittsburg,  Cincinnati,  or  St.  Louis ;  but  it  will  not 
be  given  for  that  of  a  laborer  in  Paris  or  Havre  —  the  latter 
not  being  aided  to  the  same  extent  by  machinery,  and  being 
therefore  more  dependent  on  mere  brute  force.  The  value  of 
labor,  as  compared  with  that  of  the  commodities  required  for  man's 
support,  varies  to  a  small  extent  in  the  various  portions  of 
France,  as  is  the  case  with  that  of  the  different  parts  of  England 
and  of  India ;  but  between  the  man  of  Paris  and  his  competitor 
of  Sedan,  or  Lille,  the  variation  is  trifling,  compared  with  that 
which  exists  between  a  workman  in  any  part  of  France,  and  one 
in  the  United  States.  The  circumstances  which  affect  the  power 
of  man  over  nature  in  Paris  and  Lille  are,  in  a  great  measure, 
common  to  all  the  people  of  France ;  as  are  those  which  affect 
that  of  a  workman  in  Philadelphia  to  all  the  people  of  the  Union. 
Here  we  find  the  same  effect  at  the  same  time,  but  at  different 
places,  that  has  before  been  shown  to  be  produced  at  the  same 
place,  but  at  different  times.  The  improved  machinery  of  our 
colonists  having  increased  their  powers,  their  third  year  was  more 
valuable  than  that  of  the  two  previous  ones  had  been ;  and  in  like 
manner  a  single  year's  labor  in  the  United  States  is  worth  more 
than  that  of  two  in  France.  Labor  grows  in  value  in  the  direct 
ratio  of  the  substitution  of  mental  for  muscular  force  —  of  the 
peculiar  qualities  by  which  man  is  distinguished  from  the  animal, 
for  those  which  he  possesses  in  common  with  so  many  animals ; 


156  CHAPTER   VI.    §  3. 

and  in  the  same  precise  ratio  does  the  value  of  all  commodities 
decline. 

§  3.  The  house  and  the  axe,  the  capital  that  had  been  accu 
mulated,  fell  in  value  when,  by  the  aid  of  improved  implements, 
labor  had  been  rendered  more  productive  —  the  necessary  conse 
quence  of  an  increased  facility  of  accumulation.  With  every  step 
in  this  direction,  the  laborer  finds  an  increase  in  the  reward  for 
bodily  or  mental  exertion,  as  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  the  clothing 
which,  half  a  century  since,  would  have  purchased  the  labor  of 
weeks,  could  not  now  command  that  of  as  many  days.  Half  a 
century  since,  a  steam-engine  would  have  required  the  labor  of  a 
life  to  pay  for  it,  but  at  present  it  could  be  exchanged  for  that  of 
very  few  years  of  a  common  workman  of  the  United  States.  In 
fact,  like  the  house  first  built  by  the  settler,  so  great  would  be 
found  its  inferiority  to  those  now  produced,  that  a  purchaser  at 
any  price  whatsoever  could  with  difficulty  be  found. 

The  value  of  commodities  or  machinery  at  the  time  of  produc 
tion  is  measured  by  the  quantity  and  quality  of  labor  required  to 
produce  them.  Every  improvement  in  the  mode  of  production 
tends  to  increase  the  power  of  labor,  and  to  diminish  the  quantity 
required  for  the  reproduction  of  similar  articles.  With  every  such 
improvement  there  is  a  diminution  in  the  quantity  that  can  be 
obtained  in  exchange  for  those  previously  existing ;  and  because 
no  commodity  can  be  exchanged  for  more  labor  than  is  required 
for  its  reproduction.  In  every  community  in  which  population 
and  wealth  increase,  such  changes  are  taking  place,  and  each 
is  seen  to  be  but  preparatory  to  new  and  greater  ones,  with 
constantly  increasing  tendency  to  decline  in  the  labor  value  of 
existing  commodities,  or  machines,  that  have  been  accumulated. 
The  longer,  therefore,  that  any  one,  in  the  mode  of  producing 
which  improvements  have  been  made,  has  been  in  existence — even 
where  there  has  been  no  change  in  its  powers  from  use  —  the 
smaller  is  the  proportion  which  its  present  value  bears  to  that 
which  it  originally  possessed. 

The  silver  produced  in  the  fourteenth  century  was  exchanged 
for  labor  at  the  rate  of  sevenpence  halfpenny  for  that  of  a  week. 
Since  that  time  it  has  steadily  diminished  in  its  power  of  com 
manding  the  services  of  men,  until,  at  the  present  time,  twelve  or 


OF   VALUE.  157 

fifteen  shillings  are  required  to  obtain  as  much  of  them  as,  five 
centuries,  since  could  be  had  for  *l^d.  The  various  persons 
through  whose  hands  has  passed  the  silver  that  existed  in  the 
fourteenth  century,  have  thus  experienced  a  constant  depreciation 
in  the  quantity  of  labor  that  their  capital  would  command.  An  axe 
made  fifty  years  since,  of  equal  quality  with  the  best  of  the  present 
time — and  which  had  remained  unused — would  not  now  exchange 
for  half  as  much  as  it  would  have  done  on  the  day  of  its  production. 

§  4.  Diminution  in  the  value  of  capital  is  attended  by  a  dimi 
nution  in  the  proportion  of  the  product  of  labor  given  for  its  use 
by  those  who,  unable  to  purchase,  desire  to  hire  it.  Had  the 
first  axe  been  the  exclusive  property  of  one  of  our  colonists,  he 
would  have  demanded  more  than  half  of  the  wood  that  could  be 
cut,  in  return  for  granting  the  loan  of  it.  Although  it  had  cost 
him  a  vast  amount  of  labor,  it  would  do  but  little  work ;  and 
large  as  was  the  proportion  of  its  product  he  was  thus  enabled 
to  demand,  the  quantity  that  he  would  receive  would  still  be  very 
small.  His  neighbor,  on  the  other  hand,  would  find  it  far 
more  to  his  advantage  to  give  three-fourths  of  the  product  of 
his  labor  for  the  use  of  the  axe,  than  to  continue  to  depend  on  his 
hands  alone ;  as  with  it  he  could  fell  more  trees  in  a  day  than 
without  it  he  could  do  in  a  month.  The  arrival  of  the  ship 
having  given  them  better  axes  at  smaller  cost,  neither  would 
now  give  for  their  use  so  large  a  proportion  as  he  would  before 
have  done.  The  man  who,  fifty  years  since,  desired  the  use  of 
such  an  instrument  for  a  year,  would  have  given  the  labor  of 
far  more  days,  than  he  would  now,  when  by  that  of  a  single  day 
he  might  become  the  owner  of  one  of  greatly  superior  power. 
When  A  possessed  the  only  house  in  the  settlement,  he  could 
have  demanded  of  B,  for  permission  to  use  it  for  any  given  time, 
a  much  larger  number  of  days'  labor  than  B  would  be  willing  to 
give,  when  the  possession  of  an  axe  enabled  him  to  construct  a 
similar  one  in  a  month.  At  the  time  that  a  week's  labor  would 
command  only  ^d.  of  silver,  the  owner  of  a  pound  of  that  metal 
could  demand  a  much  larger  proportion  in  return  for  its  use,  than 
can  now  be  done,  when  the  laborer  obtains  that  quantity  by  the 
exertions  of  little  more  than  a  fortnight.  Every  improvement  by 
which  production  is  aided,  is  attended  not  only  by  a  reduction  in 


158  CHAPTER    VI.    §  5. 

the  labor  value  of  previously  existing  machinery;  but,  also,  by  a 
diminution  in  the  proportion  of  the  product  of  labor  that  can 
be  demanded  in  return  for  granting  the  use  of  it. 

The  more  perfect  the  power  of  association,  and  the  greater  the 
motion  of  society,  the  greater  must  be  the  tendency  towards  the 
development  of  individuality,  the  more  rapid  the  increase  of  pro 
duction,  the  greater  the  facility  of  accumulation,  the  greater  the 
tendency  to  decline  in  the  value  of  all  existing  accumulations — and 
the  smaller  the  proportion  of  the  products  of  labor  that  can  be 
claimed  in  return  for  their  use.  In  order  that  association  may 
increase,  there  must,  as  the  reader  has  seen,  be  difference;  and 
that  results  from  diversity  of  employments.  The  greater  that 
diversity,  the  more  rapid  must  be  the  growth  of  the  power  of 
accumulation,  the  greater  the  tendency  to  diminution  in  the  pro 
portion  of  the  capitalist  and  increase  in  that  of  the  laborer,  and 
the  greater  the  tendency  to  decline  in  the  rate  of  rent,  profit,  or 
interest.  In  all  the  purely  agricultural  countries  of  the  world, 
the  rate  of  these  is  high ;  and  it  tends  to  increase  because  of  dimi 
nution  in  the  power  of  accumulation,  consequent  upon  exhaus 
tion  of  the  soil  —  being  precisely  the  reverse  of  what  is  observed 
in  all  those  countries  in  which  diversity  of  employment  is  increas 
ing  and  individuality  is  becoming  more  and  more  developed. 

Value  is  the  measure  of  the  resistance  to  be  overcome  in  obtaining 
those  commodities  or  things  required  for  our  purposes — of  the  power 
of  nature  over  man. —  The  great  object -of  MAN,  in  this  world, 
is  to  acquire  dominion  over  NATURE  —  compelling  her  to  do  his 
work ;  and  with  every  step  in  that  direction  labor  becomes  less 
severe — while  increasing  in  its  reward.  With  each,  the  accumula 
tions  of  the  past  become  less  valuable  —  with  constant  decline  in 
their  power  to  command  the  services  of  the  laborers  of  the  pre 
sent.  With  each,  the  power  of  association  grows — with  constant 
increase  in  the  tendency  to  the  development  of  the  various  facul 
ties  of  the  individual  man,  and  equally  constant  increase  in  the 
power  of  further  progress  ;  and  thus  it  is,  that  while  combination 
of  action  enables  man  to  overcome  the  resistance  of  nature,  each 
successive  triumph  is  attended  by  increased  facility  for  further 
combinations,  to  be  followed  by  new  and  greater  triumphs. 

§  5.    The  reader  who  desires  now  to  verify  for  himself  the  cor- 


OF    VALUE.  159 

rectness  of  the  views  thus  far  presented  to  him,  may  readily  do 
so  without  leaving  the  room  in  which  he  sits.  Let  him  com 
mence  by  looking  around  him,  and  seeing  what  are  the  things 
to  which  he  attaches  the  idea  of  value.  Doing  this,  he  finds  that 
among  them  is  not  included  the  air  that  he  is  constantly  inhal 
ing,  and  without  which  he  could  not  live.  Reading  by  day,  he 
finds  that  he  attaches  no  value  to  the  light ;  nor,  if  it  is  summer 
time,  does  he  value  the  heat.  If  it  is  by  night  that  he  reads,  he 
attaches  value  to  the  gas  that  affords  him  light ;  and  if  it  is  win 
ter,  to  the  coal  or  wood  by  whose  combustion  he  is  warmed. 
Inquiring  next,  why  it  is  that  he  attaches  that  idea  to  one  and 
not  to  the  other,  he  finds  that  it  is  because  the  first  is  gratuitously 
supplied  by  nature,  in  abundant  quantity,  and  at  the  place  and 
time  at  which  it  is  needed ;  whereas,  to  obtain  the  last,  there  is 
required  a  certain  amount  of  human  labor.  Coal  is  supplied  by 
nature  in  unlimited  quantity,  and  as  gratuitously  as  the  air,  but 
some  effort  is  needed  to  place  it  at  the  spot  at  which  it  is  to  be 
consumed.  The  materials  of  which  candles  are  made  are  as 
abundantly  supplied — but  to  change  them  in  form  and  place  so  as 
to  make  them  fit  to  supply  the  wants  of  man,  requires  a  certain 
quantity  of  labor ;  and  it  is  because  of  the  necessity  for  overcom 
ing  the  obstacle  impeding  the  gratification  of  our  desires,  that  we 
value  the  coal  and  the  candle,  while  attaching  no  value  whatever 
to  the  light  of  day,  or  to  the  heat  of  summer. 

Asking  himself,  next,  how  much  is  the  value  he  attaches  to  the 
chair  on  which  he  sits,  the  table  at  which  he  writes,  the  book  he 
reads,  or  the  pen  with  which  he  writes  ;  he  finds  that  it  is  limited 
by  the  cost  of  reproduction — and  that  the  greater  the  time  which 
has  elapsed  since  they  were  made,  the  greater  has  been  the  decline 
in  their  value  below  the  cost  of  production.  The  pen,  just  now 
produced,  can  be  replaced  only  by  the  expenditure  of  the  same 
amount  of  labor  that  has  been  required  for  its  production ;  and  its 
value  is  unchanged.  The  chair  and  the  table,  now  perhaps  ten 
years  old,  have  fallen  much  below  their  original  value ;  because,  in 
that  time  machinery  has^  been  invented  by  which  steam  has  been 
applied  in  various  processes  connected  with  the  manufacture  of 
such  commodities ;  which,  therefore,  have  declined  in  value  as 
compared  with  labor,  while  labor  has  risen  as  compared  with  them. 
The  book  he  reads  is.  perhaps,  still  older,  and  since  it  was  printed 


160  CHAPTER   VI.     §  5. 

there  have  been  many  improvements  in  the  manufacture — tending 
greatly  to  diminish  the  quantity  of  human  effort  required  for  its 
reproduction.  The  chemist  has  furnished  bleaching  powders  by 
help  of  which  the  color  of  the  paper  has  been  improved.  The 
railroad,  by  diminishing  friction,  has  lessened  the  cost  of  trans 
porting  rags  and  paper.  The  power  of  steam  has  superseded  the 
labor  of  the  human  arm,  and  has  enabled  the  papermaker  to  turn 
out  from  within  the  same  walls  as  many  reams,  as  before  he  could 
manufacture  quires.  Steam,  again,  aids  in  converting  metal  into 
types ;  and  the  steam-press,  that  yields  thousands  of  sheets  per 
hour,  has  superseded  the  hand-press  that  yielded  only  hundreds. 
With  every  such  increase  in  the  mastery  over  nature  acquired  by 
man,  there  has  been  a  decline  in  the  value  of  existing  books  as 
measured  by  labor,  and  an  increase  in  the  value  of  labor  as  com 
pared  with  books  —  as  the  reader  may  readily  satisfy  himself  by 
looking  around  his  library  and  comparing  the  value  he  now 
attaches  to  standard  works  that  are  constantly  being  reproduced, 
with  that  in  which  he  had  held  them  ten  or  twenty  years  before. 
A  copy  of  the  Bible,  of  Milton,  or  of  Shakspeare,  can  now  be 
obtained  for  the  labor  of  a  single  day  of  a  skilled  workman,  bet 
ter  in  quality  than  could,  half  a  century  since,  have  been  obtained 
in  return  for  that  of  a  week ;  the  necessary  consequence  of  which 
has  been  a  decline  in  the  value  of  all  existing  copies  of  such 
works,  whether  in  private  libraries  or  in  the  hands  of  booksellers — 
the  cost  of  reproduction  being  the  limit  beyond  which  value  cannot 
extend.* 

Again,  of  the  books  in  his  possession  all  those  that  were  bound 
forty  years  since,  are  in  leather ;  whereas  of  the  recent  ones  nearly 
all  are  probably  in  cloth.  In  the  earlier  period,  cotton  cloth 
required  for  its  production  a  large  amount  of  human  labor,  and 

*  Why,  it  may  be  asked,  is  it  that  a  copy  of  the  Valdarfer  Boccacio  sells 
for  thousands  of  guineas,  being  probably  a  thousand  times  more  than  the 
price  it  had  at  first  commanded?  In  answer,  the  real  value  of  the  book 
is  to  be  found  in  the  pleasure  or  instruction  to  be  derived  from  its  perusal ; 
and  that  is  now  obtainable  at  a  tenth  of  the  cost  of  labor  required  in  the 
early  days  of  the  printing  art.  All  such  values  as  that  above  referred  to, 
are  as  purely  imaginary,  and  as  dependent  upon  fashion,  as  were  some  of 
those  of  Holland  in  the  days  of  the  tulipomania.  Value  is  limited  by  the 
cost  of  reproduction ;  and  where  a  commodity  cannot  be  reproduced,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Boccacio,  or  in  those  of  pictures  by  Guido,  or  sculptures  by 
Phidias,  its  value  has  no  limit  but  in  the  fancy  of  those  who  desire  to  pos 
sess  it,  and  have  the  ability  to  pay  for  it. 


OF   VALUE.  161 

its  value  was  great — so  much  so  that  twelve  or  fifteen  yards  were 
all  that  the  laborer  could  purchase  by  the  efforts  of  a  week. 
Since  then,  however,  various  natural  forces  have  been  brought  to 
aid  the  efforts  of  the  clothmaker  —  steam  having  superseded  the 
fingers  that  before  had  spun  the  wool,  and  the  arms  that  before 
had  woven  the  cloth ;  while  the  chemist  has  done  the  same  by  the 
light  of  the  sun,  and  has  enabled  the  bleacher  to  accomplish  in  an 
hour  what  before  had  required  the  labor  of  a  week ;  and  the  con 
sequence  of  this  increased  power  over  nature  has  been,  that  a  yard 
of  cloth  that  half  a  century  since  would  have  been  a  sufficient 
compensation  for  the  labor  of  half  a  day,  may  now  be  had  in 
return  for  that  of  an  hour.  The  trader  who  may  have  re 
tained  on  his  shelves  a  piece  of  cloth  made  half  a  century  since, 
must  have  found  it  steadily  declining  in  value,  with  the  reduc 
tion  of  the  cost  at  which  it  could  be  reproduced.  Let  him  con 
tinue  to  retain  it,  and,  as  new  powers  are  impressed  into  the  ser 
vice  of  man,  he  may  witness  its  further  fall,  until  he  will  estimate 
it  as  being  only  the  equivalent  of  a  fiftieth  part  of  the  labor  for 
which  it  would  originally  have  paid.  The  utility  of  cotton  has 
greatly  increased,  but  the  value  of  cotton  cloth  has  as  greatly 
diminished ;  and  all  because  nature,  who  works  gratuitously,  has 
from  year  to  year  been  more  and  more  made  to  do  what  previously 
was  performed  by  human  labor  —  requiring  a  constant  supply  of 
food  and  clothing  to  keep  the  machine  in  order  for  doing  the  work. 

§6.  "Labor,"  says  Adam  Smith,  "was  the  first  price,  the 
original  purchase-money  paid  for  all  things  ;"  and  it  constitutes  in 
his  opinion  "  the  ultimate  and  real  standard "  by  which  their 
values  can  be  "estimated  and  compared."*  Comparing,  then, 
the  price  paid  with  the  commodity  obtained,  labor  would  be, 
according  to  this  authority,  the  standard  of  value  for  things  of 
every  description  ;  whether  the  cultivated  land  itself,  or  the  com 
modities  obtained  in  return  for  the Jabor  given  to  its  cultivation. 
In  another  place,  however,  he  tells  his  readers  that  the  price  paid 
for  the  use  of  land  "  is  not  at  all  proportioned  to  what  the  land 
lord  may  have  laid  out  upon  the  improvement  of  the  land,  or  to 
what  he  can  afford  to  take,  but  to  what  the  former  can  afford  to 
give,"  and  "is  naturally  a  monopoly  price."  We  have  here  a 
*  Wealth  of  Nations,  book  1,  chap.  v. 


162  CHAPTER   VI.    §  6. 

cause  of  value  in  land  additional  to  the  labor  expended  upon  it, 
or  for  its  benefit ;  and  thus  does  he  establish  for  it  a  law  entirely  dif 
ferent  from  that  propounded  as  the  cause  of  value  in  "  all  things." 
Mr.  McCulloch  informs  his  readers  that  "labor  is  the  only 
source  of  wealth  ;"  and  that  "neither  water,  leaves,  skins,  nor  any 
of  the  spontaneous  productions  of  nature,  has  any  value,  except 
what  it  owes  to  the  labor  required  for  its  appropriation."  "Na 
tural  powers  may,  however,"  as  he  continues,  "be  appropriated 

*  or  engrossed  by  one  or  more  individuals,  to  the  exclusion  of  oth- 
,  ers,  and  those  by  whom  they  are  so  engrossed  may  exact  a  price 
for  their  services ;  but  does  that,"  he  inquires,  "show  that  these 
services  cost  these  engrossers  anything  ?  If  A  has  a  waterfall  on 
his  estate  he  may  probably  get  a  rent  for  it.  It  is  plain,  however, 
that  the  work  performed  by  the  waterfall  is  as  completely  gratui 
tous  as  that  which  is  performed  by  the  wind  that  acts  on  the 
blades  of  a  windmill.  The  only  difference  between  them  consists 
in  this  :  that  all  individuals  having  it  in  their  power  to  avail  them 
selves  of  the  services  of  the  wind,  no  one  can  intercept  the  bounty 
of  nature,  and  exact  a  price  for  that  which  she  freely  bestows ; 
whereas  A,  by  appropriating  the  waterfall,  and,  consequently, 
acquiring  a  command  over  it,  has  it  in  his  power  to  prevent  its 
being  used,  or  to  sell  its  services."* 

We  have  here  the  same  contradiction  already  exhibited  as  exist 
ing  in  the  Wealth  of  Nations.     Labor  is,  we  are  assured,  the  only 

v  source  of  wealth — the  only  cause  of  value ;  and  yet,  the  chief  item 
among  the  values  of  the  world  is  found  in  the  hands  of  those  per 
sons  who,  according  to  our  author,  "intercept  the  bounty  of 
nature,  and  exact  a  price  for  that  which  she  freely  bestows" —  and 
that  price  they  are  enabled  to  demand  because  of  having  been 
enabled  to  "  acquire  a  command  "  over  certain  natural  forces,  and 
to  prevent  them  from  being  used  by  any  who  are  unwilling  to  pay 
their  owner  "for  their  services."  There  are;thus,  according  to 
both  of  these  authorities,  two.  causes  of  value  •>— k,bpr  and  mono 
poly — the  first  standing  alone  as  regards  all  "the  spontaneous 
productions  of  nature;"  and  the  two  being  combined  in  reference 
to  land,  the  great  source  of  all  production. 

In  like  manner,  Mr.  Ricardo  assures  nis  readers  that  the  price 
paid  for  the  use  of  land  is  to  be  divided  into  two  portions  :  first, 
*  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  part  1,  chap.  i. 


OF    VALUE.  163 

that  which  may  be  demanded  in  return  for  the  labor  which  has 
been  "  employed  in  ameliorating  the  quality  of  the  land,  and  in 
erecting  such  buildings  as  are  necessary  to  secure  and  preserve 
the  produce;"  and,  second,  "that  which  is  paid  to  the  landlord 
for  the  use  of  original  and  indestructible  powers  of  the  soil"  — 
which  latter  is  so  much  additional  to  what  could  be  demanded  in 
return  for  the  use  of  any  other  of  the  various  instruments  of  pro 
duction. 

Mr.  J.  B.  Say  informs  us  that — 

"  The  earth  is  not  the  only  material  agent  with  productive 
power,  but  it  is  the  only  one,  or  nearly  so,  that  can  be  appropri 
ated.  The  water  of  rivers  and  of  the  sea,  which  supplies  us  with 
fish,  gives  motion  to  our  mills,  and  supports  our  vessels,  has  pro 
ductive  powers.  The  wind  gives  us  force,  and  the  sun  heat,  but 
happily  no  man  can  say,  '  The  wind  and  the  sun  belong  to  me, 
and  I  will  be  paid  for  their  services.'  "* 

Mr.  Senior,  on  the  contrary,  insists  that  air  and  sunshine,  the 
waters  of  the  river  and  the  sea,  "the  land  and  all  its  attributes," 
are  equally  susceptible  of  appropriation,  f  In  order,  in  his  view, 
that  a  commodity  may  have  value  in  the  eyes  of  men,  it  is  required 
that  it  shall  be  useful,  susceptible  of  appropriation,  and  of  course 
transferable,  and  limited  in  supply — -all_of  which  qualities  are,  as 
he  supposes,  possessed  by  land,  the  owners  of  which  are  there 
fore  enabled  to  charge  monopoly  prices  for  its  use. 

Mr.  Mill  says,  that  the  rent  of  land  is  a  "price  paid  for  a 
natural  agency;"  that  no  such  price  is  paid  in  manufactures; 
that  ' '  the  reason  why  the  use  of  land  bears  a  price  is  simply  the 
limitation  of  its  quantity ; ' '  and  that  ' '  if  air,  heat,  electricity, 
chemical  agencies,  and  the  other  powers  of  nature  employed  by 
manufacturers  were  sparingly  supplied,  and  could,  like  land,  be 
engrossed  and  appropriated,  a  rent  would  be  exacted  for  them 
also."  Here  again  we  have  a  monopoly  value  additional  to  the 
price  that  could  be  demanded  by  the  owner,  as  compensation  for 
the  labor  bestowed  upon,  or  for  the  benefit  of,  the  land. 

The  reader  has  seen  that  of  those  portions  of  the  earth  which 
man  converts  into  bows  and  arrows,  canoes,  ships,  houses,  books, 
cloth,  or  steam-engines,  the  value  is  determined  by  the  cjist  of 
reproduction  —  that  that,  in  all  advancing  communities,  is  less^ 

*  j-lcon.  Pol.,  liv.  2,  clm}>.  ix,  f  Outlines  of  Polit.  Econ.,  p.  131. 


164  CHAPTER   VI.    §  6. 

than  the  cost  of  production  —  and  that  the  decline  in  the  former V^v 
\  below  the  latter  is  always  most  rapid  when  (population  and  the 
J  consequent  power  of  association  increase  most  rapidly})   When, 
however,  we  look  to  those  portions  of  it  which  he  uses  for  the 
purposes  of  cultivation,  we  find,  according  to  all  these  writers,  a 
law  directly  the  opposite  of  all  this — the  value  of  land  being  equal 
to  the  cost  of  producing  it  in  its  existing  form,  phis  the  value  of 
\a  monopoly  power  increasing  with  the  growth  of  numbers,  and 
most  rapidly  when  the  growth  of  population  and  of  the  power  of 
association  is  most  rapid. 

To  admit  the  correctness  of  this  view,  would  be  to  admit  that 
while  the  clay  through  which  the  farmer  guided  his  plough  was 
subjected  to  one  set  of  laws,  it  became  the  subject  of  other  and 
directly  opposite  ones,  so  soon  as  it  had  passed  tyirough  the  pot 
ter's  hands,  and  had  been  converted  into  china  or  earthenware  — 
that  there  was  no  such  thing  as  universality  in  the  laws  that  govern 
matter  —  and,  consequently,  that  the  great  Architect  of  the  uni 
verse  has  given  us  a  system  abounding  in  discords  ;  and  in  the 
working  of  which  we  could  look  for  no  approach  to  harmony. 
Whether  or  not  this  really  is  so,  is  to  be  determined  by  an  exami 
nation  of  the  facts  of  the  case,  as  exhibited  in  the  value  of  land 
compared  with  the  labor  that  would  now  be  required  for  its 
reproduction  in  its  existing  form.  Should  that  result  in  proving 
the  firmer  to  be  greater  than  the  latter,  then  the  doctrine  of  all 
these  writers  must  be  admitted  to  be  correct;  but,  should  it 
prove  that  land  will  nowhere  exchange  for  as  much  labor  as 
would  be  required  for  such  reproduction,  it  will  then  have  to 
be  admitted  that  value  is,  in  all  and  every  case,  but  a  mea 
sure  of  the  amount  of  physical  and  mental  effort  required  to 
overcome  the  obstacles  standing  in  the  way  of  the  accomplish 
ment  of  our  desires  —  that  the  price  charged  for  the  use  of  land 
is,  like  that  charged  for  the  use  of  all  other  commodities  and 
things,  but  compensation  for  the  accumulations  resulting  from  the 
labors  of  the  past  —  that  that  price  tends  everywhere  to  diminish 
in  its  proportion  to  the  product  obtained  by  help  of  the  machine 
— and,  that  there  is  but*,  one  system  of  laws  for  the  government  of 
all  matter,  let  the  form  in  which  it  exists  be  what  it  may. 

Twelve  years  since,  the  annual  value  of  the  land  and  of  the 
mines  of  Great  Britain,  including  therein  the  share  of  the'  Church, 


OF   VALUE.  165 

was  estimated  by  Sir  Robert  Peel  at  £41,800,000  — which,  at 
twenty-five  years'  purchase,  would  give  a  principal  sum  of  nearly 
twelve  hundred  millions  of  pounds.  Estimating  the  wages  of 
laborers,  miners,  mechanics,  and  those  by  whom  their  labors  are 
directed,  at  £50  pounds  per  annum  each,  the  land  would,  then, 
represent  the  labors  of  twenty-four  millions  of  men  for  a  single 
year  ;  or  of  one  million  for  twenty-four  years. 

Let  us  now  suppose  the  island  reduced  to  the  state  in  which  it 
was  found  by  Caesar ;  covered  with  impenetrable  woods,  (the  tim 
ber  of  which  is  of  no  value  because  of  its  superabundance,)  and 
abounding  in  marshes  and  swamps,  heaths  and  sandy  wastes ; 
and  then  estimate  the  quantity  of  labor  that  would  be  required  to 
place  it  in  its  present  position,  with  its  lands  cleared,  levelled, 
enclosed,  and  drained ;  with  its  turnpikes  and  railroads,  its 
churches,  school-houses,  colleges,  court-houses,  market-houses, 
furnaces,  and  forges  ;  its  coal,  iron,  and  copper  mines,  and  the 
thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  other  improvements  required 
for  bringing  into  activity  those  powers  for  the  use  of  which  rent 
is  paid ;  and  it  will  be  found  that  it  would  require  the  labor  of 
millions  of  men  fojr_centuries^even  although  provided  with  all  the 
machinery  of  modern  times  —  the  best  axe  and  the  best  plough, 
the  steam-engine,  the  railway,  and  its  locomotive. 

The  same  thing  may  now  be  exhibited  on  a  smaller  scale.  A 
part  of  South  Lancashire,  the  forest  and  chase  of  Rossertdale, 
embracing  an  area  of  twenty-four  square  miles,  contained  eighty 
souls  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century ;  and  the  rental, 
in  the  time  of  James  I.,  little  more  than  two  centuries  since, 
amounted  to  £122  13s.  8d.  It  has  now  a  population  of  eighty- 
one  thousand;  and  the  annual  rental  is  £50,000,  equivalent,  at 
twenty-five  years'  purchase,  to  £1,250,000.  Without  having 
seen  this  land,  there  can  be  no  hesitation  in  saying,  that  if  it  were 
now  given  to  Baron  Rothschild  in  the  state  in  which  it  existed  in 
the  days  of  James,  with  a  bounty  equal  to  its  value  —  on  condi 
tion  of  doing  with  the  timber  the  same  that  had  been  done  with 
that  which  then  stood  upon  the  ground  —  he  binding  himself  to 
give  to  the  property  the  same  advantages  as  those  for  which  rent 
is  now  paid ;  his  private  fortune  would  be  expended  in  addition 
to  the  bounty  long  before  the  work  had  been  half  completed. 
The  amount  received  as  rent  is  interest  upon  the  value  of  labor 


166  CHAPTER    VI.    6§  . 

expended,  WUMMS  the  differerence  between  the  productive  power 
of  Rossendale  and  that  of  the  newer  soils  which  can  now  be 
brought  into  activity  by  the  application  of  the  same  labor  that 
has  been  there  given  to  the  work.  tdU£jj&us^+***t-»  'iJbLiu  J 

The  cash  value  of  farms  in  the  State  of  New  York  was  returned 
by  the  marshal,  under  the  last  census,  at  $554,000,000  ;  and  add 
ing  thereto  the  value  of  roads,  buildings,  and  other  works  of  im 
provement,  we  shall  obtain  a  sum  probably  double  in  amount  — 
or  the  equivalent  of  the  labor  of  a  million  of  men  working  three 
hundred  days  in  the  year,  for  four  years — and  receiving  a  dollar  a 
day  for  their  labor.  Were  the  land  restored  to  the  condition  in 
which  it  stood  in  the  days  of  Hendrick  Hudson,  and  presented 
in  free  gift'  to  an  association  of  the  greatest  capitalists  of  Europe, 
with  a  bonus  in  money  equal  to  its  present  value,  their  private 
fortunes  and  the  bonus  would  be  found  to  be  exhausted  before  the 
existing  improvements  had  been,  even  to  the  extent  of  one-fifth, 
executed. 

The  farming  land  of  Pennsylvania  was  returned,  under  the  census, 
at  $403,000,000,  cash  value.  Doubling  this,  to  obtain  the  value 
of  real  estate  and  its  improvements,  we  obtain  $806,000,000  —  or 
the  equivalent  of  the  labors  of  six  hundred  and  seventy  thousand 
men  for  four  years ;  being  not  one-tenth  of  what  would  be  required 
to  reproduce  the  State  in  its  present  condition,  were  it  restored  to 
that  in  which  it  stood  at  the  date  of  the  arrival  of  the  Swedes  who 
commenced  the  work  of  settlement. 

William  Penn  followed  them,  profiting  by  what  they  had 
already  done.  When  he  obtained  the  grant  of  all  that  land 
which  now  constitutes  Pennsylvania,  and  westward  as  far  as  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  it  was  supposed  he  had  a  princely  estate.  He 
invested  his  capital  in  the  transport  of  settlers,  and  devoted  his 
time  and  attention  to  the  new  colony  ;  but,  after  many  years  of 
turmoil  and  vexation,  found  himself  so  much  embarrassed  in  his 
affairs,  that  in  the  year  1708  he  mortgaged  the  whole  for  £6600 
sterling,  to  pay  the  debts  incurred  in  settling  the  province.  He 
had  received  the  grant  in  payment  of  a  debt  amounting,  with 
interest,  to  £29,200,  and  his  expenditure,  interest  included,  was 
£52,373  ;  while  the  whole  amount  received  in  twenty  years  was 
only  £19,460  —  leaving  him  minus,  altogether,  £62,113.  Some 
years  later,  the  government  made  an  agreement  with  him  to  pur- 


or  VALUE.  167 

chase  the  whole  at  £12,000,  but  a  fit  of  apoplexy  prevented  the 
completion  of  the  agreement.  At  his  death,  he  left  his  Irish 
estates  to  his  favorite  child,  as  the  most  valuable  part  of  his 
property — the  American  portion  being  worth  far  less  than  the 
cost  of  production.  The  Duke  of  York  obtained  a  similar  grant 
of  New  Jersey,  but,  many  years  afterwards,  it  was  offered  for  sale 
at  about  £5000 — being  much  less  than  had  been  expended  upon  it. 

The  owners  of  unoccupied  lands  in  the  United  States  have 
found,  to  their  cost,  that  the  "natural  agent"  had  no  value. 
Led  away  in  the  same  manner  with  William  Penn,  the  Duke  of 
York,  the  grantees  of  Swan  River  Settlement,  and  many  others,' 
they  supposed  that  land  must  become  very  valuable ;  and  many 
men  of  great  acuteness  were  induced  to  invest  large  sums  therein. 
Robert  Morris,  the  able  financier  of  the  Revolution,  was  the  one 
who  pushed  this  speculation  to  the  greatest  extent,  taking  up  im 
mense  quantities  at  very  low  prices  —  often  as  low  as  ten  cents  an 
acre  ;  but  experience  has  shown  his  error.  His  property,  although 
much  of  it  was  excellent,  has  never  paid  the  charges  upon  it ;  and 
such  has  been  the  result  of  every  operation  of  the  kind.  Nume 
rous  persons,  owners  of  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  acres, 
who  have  been  paying  county  and  road  taxes,  and  have  been  thus 
impoverishing  themselves  ;  would  now  gladly  receive  the  amount 
of  their  expenses  and  interest — losing  altogether  the  original  cost. 
Their  difficulty  has  not  resulted  from  any  absence  of  fertility,  but 
from  the  fact  that — -the  cost  of  reproduction  being  a  steadily  dimi 
nishing  one  —  better  farms  are  obtainable  in  return  to  a  smaller 
amount  of  labor. 

The  Holland  Land  Company  purchased  large  quantities  at 
exceedingly  low  prices,  and  their  property  was  well  managed ; 
but  the  proprietors  sunk  a  vast  amount  of  capital.  No  portion 
of  the  United  States  has  improved  more  rapidly  than  that  part  of 
the  State  of  New  York  in  which  it  was  chiefly  situated  ;  none  has 
derived  greater  advantage  from  the  construction  of  the  Erie 
Canal ;  and  yet  the  whole  of  the  original  purchase-money  was 
sunk.  Had  they  given  away  the  land,  and  employed  otherwise 
the  same  amount  of  capital  that  was  expended  on  it,  the  result 
would  have  been  thrice  more  advantageous. 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  cases  in  proof  of  the  position,  that 
property  in  land  obeys  the  same  law  with  that  of  all  other  descrip- 


168  CHAPTER  VI.    §  6. 

tions  ;  and  that  this  applies  to  towns  and  cities  as  well  as  land. 
With  all  their  advantages  of  situation,  London  and  Liverpool, 
Paris  and  Bordeaux,  New  York  and  New  Orleans,  would  ex 
change  for  but  a  small  portion  of  the  labor  that  would  be  required 
to  reproduce  them,  were  their  sites  again  reduced  to  the  state  in 
which  they  were  found  by  the  people  by  whom  they  were  first 
commenced.  Throughout  the  Union,  there  is  not  a  county,  town 
ship,  town,  or  city,  that  would  sell  for  cost ;  or  one  whose  rents 
are  equal  to  the  interest  upon  the  labor  and  capital  expended 
on  their  improvement. 

.  Every  one  is  familiar  with  the  fact  that  farms  sell  for  little  more 
than  the  value  of  the  improvements.  When  we  .come  to  inquire 
what  "improvements"  are  included  in  this  estimate,  we  find  that 
the  heaviest  are  omitted  —  nothing  being  put  down  for  clearing 
and  draining  the  land,  for  the  roads  that  have  been  made,  or 
for  the  court-house  and  the  prison  that  have  been  built  with  the 
taxes  annually  paid ;  for  the  church  and  the  school-house 
that  have  been  built  by  subscription ;  for  the  canal  that  passes 
through  a  piece  of  fine  meadow-land,  the  contribution  of  the 
owner  to  the  great  work ;  or  for  a  thousand  other  conveniences 
and  advantages  that  give  value  to  the  property,  and  produce  the 
disposition  to  pay  rent  for  its  use.  Were  all  these  things  esti 
mated,  it  would  be  found  that  the  selling  price  is — cost,  minus  a 
very  large  difference. 

The  United  States  Government  has  recently  made  a  purchase 
of  many  millions  of  acres,  for  which  it  has  contracted  to  pay  to 
the  Indian  proprietors  what  appears  a  very  low  price  ;  and  yet  the 
whole  value  of  that  land  is  due  to  the  fact  that  our  own  people 
have  been  making  roads  leading  to  and  from  it,  digging  canals, 
and  building  vessels  of  all  kinds,  by  means  of  which  its  products 
may  cheaply  go  to  market.  Half  a  century  since,  the  land  of 
Missouri  was  equally  valueless ;  and  that  of  Indiana  and  Illinois, 
Michigan  and  Wisconsin,  was  little  better.  Sixty  years  since,  such 
was  the  case  as  regarded  Kentucky  and  Ohio  ;  and  seventy  years 
since,  it  was  so  with  Western  Pennsylvania  and  New  York.  A 
century  since,  the  eastern  portions  of  those  States  were  in  the  same 
situation  ;  and  the  total  value  of  the  land  of  New  England,  at  that 
date,  was  probably  not  as  great  as  is  now  that  of  the  little  piece 
upon  which  stands  the  city  of  Boston.  By  slow  degrees,  the  lands 


OF   VALUE.  169 

nearest  the  ocean  have  been  acquiring  value,  until  farm-land  sells 
in  some  places  at  two  or  three  hundred  dollars  an  acre ;  and  with 
every  step  in  this  direction,  those  more  distant  have  gradually 
risen  from  nothing  to  ten,  twenty,  and  fifty  cents — then,  to  the 
government  price  of  a  dollar  and  twenty-five  cents — and  then,  to 
ten,  fifteen,  and  twenty  dollars ;  but,  rapid  as  has  been  the  rise, 
the  price  that  could  now  be  obtained  for  all  the  real  estate  north 
of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line,  and  of  the  Ohio,  would  not  pay  for 
one-fifth  of  the  labor  that  would  be  required  to  reproduce  it  in 
its  present  form,  were  it  again  reduced  to  a  state  of  nature. 

With  every  step  in  the  progress  of  man  towards  obtaining  do 
minion  over  nature  —  towards  enabling  himself  to  reduce  to  his 
service  the  forces  by  which  he  is  everywhere  surrounded  —  there 
is  a  diminution  in  the  cost  of  reproducing  the  commodities  and 
things  required  for  his  use  ;  with  constant  decline  in  their  value 
as  compared  with  labor,  and  increase  in  the  value  of  labor  as 
compared  with  them.  That  this  is  so,  as  regards  axes,  spades, 
ploughs,  and  steam-engines,  wheat,  rye,  cotton  and  other  cloth, 
the  reader  has  had  abundant  evidence ;  and  that  it  is  so,  as  regards 
land,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  it  may  be  everywhere  purchased  at 
less  than  the  cost  of  production. 

§  7.  With  the  decline  in  the  value  of  axes  and  spades,  there  is 
everywhere  a  diminution  in  the  proportion  of  the  product  charged 
for  their  use  ;  and  that  diminution  is  always  most  rapid  when 
the  improvement  in  their  quality  is  greatest.  Such,  too,  is  the 
case  with  land,  the  rent  of  which  steadily  declines  in  the  propor 
tion  it  bears  to  the  product  of  labor ;  and  most  rapidly  where  the 
march  of  improvement  is  most  rapid.  In  the  days  of  the  Planta- 
genets,  the  land-owner  of  England  took  all,  and  gave  what  he 
pleased  to  his  serf.  Since  then,  as  labor  has  become  more  pro 
ductive,  there  has  been  a  steady  decline  in  the  proportion  claimed 
by  the  owner  of  land,  until  it  has  fallen  to  an  average  of  one-fifth 
— leaving  four-fifths  to  the  man  who  works  it,  as  compensation  for 
his  labor.  The  movement  here,  is,  as  we  see,  precisely  the  same 
that  has  been  observed  in  regard  to  the  hire  of  axes,  the  freight 
of  ships,  and  the  interest  of  money ;  and  furnishes  additional  proof 
of  the  universality  of  the  Jaws,  which  govern  matter  —  whatever 
the  form  under  which  it  exists. 

VOL.  I.— 12 


170  CH AFTER   VI.     §  7. 

The  error  of  all  the  economists  to  whom  reference  has  been 
made,  and  indeed  of  all  writers  on  social  science,  consists  in  this  : 
that,  instead  of  studying  what  it  is  that  men  have  always  done, 
and  what  they  now  do,  in  regard  to  land,  they  study  in  their  clo 
sets  what  they  ought  to  do,  and  what  they  imagine  they  them 
selves  would  do,  under  similar  circumstances.  When,  for  instance, 
Adam  Smith  wrote  the  passage  in  which  he  assumed  that  ' '  the 
most  fertile  and  best  situated  lands"  having  been  first  occupied, 
men  could  thereafter  obtain  less  profit  from  the  cultivation  of  those 
remaining,  that  were  inferior  in  soil  and  situation  —  giving 
that  as  a  reason  for  the  diminution  in  the  proportion  of  the  capi 
talist  that  always  attends  advance  in  wealth  and  population ;  he 
totally  overlooked  the  facts  presented  by  the  history  of  his  own 
country ;  all  of  which  show  that  men  have,  everywhere  throughout 
its  limits,  commenced  with  the  poorer  soils  of  the  hills,  and  have 
worked  to,  and  not  from,  the  richer  ones  of  the  river  bottoms. 

It  was  natural  that  he,  and  his  successors  in  England  and  in 
France,  should  think,  that  when  men  had  the  choice  between  rich 
and  poor  soils,  they  would,  of  course,  take  the  former,  as  capable 
of  yielding  the  largest  returns  to  any  given  quantity  of  labor. 
Had  they,  however,  reflected  that  the  early  settlers  of  their 
respective  countries  had  been  obliged  to  work  with  their  hands 
alone,  and  had  therefore  had  little  power  to  compel  nature  to  labor 
for  them — whereas  nature  herself,  as  exhibited  in  the  rich  bottom 
lands,  was  all-powerful  and  capable  of  manifesting  a  most  deter 
mined  resistance  to  their  efforts  —  it  could  scarcely  have  failed  to 
become  obvious  to  them  that  it  was  upon  the  poor  and  thin  soils 
of  the  hills  that  the  work  of  cultivation  must  of  necessity  have  been 
commenced  ;  and  reference  to  history  would  have  enabled  them  to 
satisfy  themselves  that  such  had  been  the  universal  fact. 

To  this  assumption  is  due  that  error  which  has  everywhere  been 
made  in  reference  to  the  cause  of  value  in  land ;  as  will  be  obvious 
to  the  reader,  when  he  sees  that  similar  errors  must  have  arisen  in 
reference  to  all  other  commodities  and  things,  if  subjected  to  the 
same  course  of  reasoning.  Let  us,  for  instance,  suppose  it  to 
have  been  assumed,  that  nature  had  everywhere  furnished  ready- 
made  axes,  and  that  all  the  effort  required  of  man  had  been 
that  of  making  his  selection  between  the  first,  second,  third, 
tenth,  or  twentieth  quality  —  and  then  examine  the  result. 


OF    VALUE.  171 

Under  such  circumstances,  it  might  be  fairly  assumed  that  the  first 
settlers  would  take  the  best  —  those  that  would  cut  the  largest 
quantity  of  timber  in  the  shortest  time  —  and  that,  when  they  had 
all  been  taken  up,  their  successors  would  be  forced  to  take  the 
second  quality ;  and  so  on  in  succession,  until,  with  the  growth  of 
numbers,  some  persons  would  find  themselves  reduced  to  work 
with  those  of  the  tenth  or  twentieth  class.  What  now  would  be 
the  value  of  those  of  the  first  quality  ?  Obviously,  the  cost  of 
appropriation,  plus  the  difference  between  the  natural  powers  of 
axe  No.  1  and  axe  No.  10,  or  20 ;  and  the  more  rapid  the  increase 
of  population,  the  greater  would  be  the  demand  for  additional 
supplies — the  greater  the  necessity  for  resorting  to  those  of  inferior 
power — the  more  rapid  the  decline  in  the  average  return  to  labor 
—  and  the  more  rapid  the  growth  of  value  in  the  axes  first  ap 
propriated.  The  resistance  presented  by  nature  being  a  con 
stantly  growing  one,  the  accumulations  of  the  past  would  be 
attaining  a  constantly  increasing  power  over  the  labors  of  the 
present. 

Directly  the  reverse  of  all  this  we  know  to  be  the  fact.  Man 
commences  the  work  of  cutting  timber  with  a  sharpened  shell,  and 
thence  he  passes  to  a  flint ;  next,  he  obtains  copper,  after  which 
comes  iron,  and  then  steel ;  and  with  every  step  in  this  direction, 
there  is  an  increased  return  to  labor_j_w.ith  constant  diminution  in 
the  value  of  all  existing  axes,  as  the  cost  of  reproduction  steadily 
declines.  The  resistance  here  offered  by  nature  to  the  gratification 
of  man's  desires  is  constantly  diminishing,  and  the  laborers  of  the 
present  are  obtaining  constantly  increased  power  over  the  accu 
mulations  of  the  past. — In  the  first  of  these  cases,  the  value  of 
axes  must  have  been  composed  of  the  labor  of  appropriation,  plus 
that  of  the  natural  agent  that  had  been  appropriated.  In  the 
second,  it  is  the  same  labor  of  appropriation,  minus  that  which  is 
economized  by  the  substitution  of  the  gratuitous  forces  always 
existing  in  nature,  and  more  and  more  compelled  to  labor  in  the 
service  of  man. 

Experience  having  shown  a  perfect  similarity  in  the  course  of 
action  in  regard  to  the  land  and  all  the  machinery  into  which 
parts  of  it  are  at  times  converted,  whether  axes  or  steam-engines, 
houses  or  ships  —  the  isolated  man  having  commenced  with  poor 
machinery  of  production,  and  the  associated  one  having  been  en- 


172  CHAPTER   VI.    §  8. 

abled  to  command  the  services  of  that  of  a  higher  order  —  the 
same  results  should  always  follow,  as  like  causes  produce  like  ef 
fects.  That  they  do  follow,  is  shown  in  the  fact,  that  the  value  of 
land  obeys  the  same  law  as  that  of  axes — declining  in  its  power  to 
command  the  services  of  the  laborers,  and  enabling  the  laborer  to 
command  its  services  in  return  for  a  constantly  decreasing  propor 
tion  of  the  increased  product  of  land  and  labor,  claimed  by  the 
landlord  as  rent.  Such  being  the  case,  it  must  be  obvious  that 
the  latter  possesses  no  more  power  to  charge  for  the  labor  of  the 
natural  agent,  employed  in  the  production  of  wheat,  than  does  the 
owner  of  the  axe  to  charge  for  those  of  the  natural  agents  em 
ployed  in  cutting  timber ;  and  that  all  that  the  one  receives,  is 
compensation  for  a  portion  of  the  labor  that  has  been  employed 
in  reducing  the  land  to  cultivation,  and  otherwise  improving  it ; 
while  the  other  receives  in  like  manner  compensation  for  his  ser 
vices  in  mining  and  smelting  the  ore,  and  making  the  axe.  It  is 
population,  and  the  consequent  power  of  association,  that  enable 
men  to  obtain  food  from  the  rich  soils,  and  to  pass  from  the  axe 
of  stone  to  that  of  steel ;  and  it  is  depopulation,  with  its  conse 
quent  diminution  in  the  power  of  combination,  that  drives  them 
back  to  the  poor  soils  in  quest  of  food,  and  forces  them  to  depend 
upon  the  axe  of  stone  where  before  they  had  one  of  steel.  With 
the  first,  there  is  a  constant  increase  in  the  power  of  man  over 
nature,  with  decline  of  values  as  compared  with  labor.  With  the 
second,  there  is  as  constant  increase  in  the  power  of  nature  over 
man,  with  decline  in  the  value  of  labor,  as  compared  with  machi 
nery  of  every  kind. 

§  8.  It  may,  however,  be  said :  Here  are  two  fields  upon  which 
has  been  bestowed  an  equal  quantity  of  labor,  the  one  of  which 
will  command  twice  the  rent,  and  will  sell  for  twice  the  price,  of 
the  other ;  and  it  may  be  asked — If  value  results  exclusively  from 
labor,  how  does  it  happen  that  the  owner  of  the  one  is  so  much 
richer  than  he  who  owns  the  other  ? 

In  reply  to  this  question,  it  is  easy  to  show  that  similar  facts 
exist  in  relation  to  those  other  commodities  and  things  whose 
value  is,  by  all,  admitted  to  result  exclusively  from  labor.  The 
glass-blower  puts  into  his  furnace  a  large  quantity  of  sand,  and  kelp 
or  other  alkali,  and  takes  from  it  glass ;  but  the  qualities  of  the 


OF   VALUE.  173 

latter  are  very  various,  although  produced  from  the  same  mass  of 
raw  materials.  Some  of  it  passes  in  the  market  as  No.  1,  and 
some  as  Nos.  2,  3,  4,  and  5 ;  while  a  part  may  be  of  so  inferior  a 
quality  as  to  be  almost  worthless  ;  and  yet  the  labor  employed  on 
all  the  parts  has  been  exactly  equal.  ATI  of  it  has  the  same  limit 
of  value  —  the  cost  of  reproduction.  The  resistance  offered  by 
nature  to  the  production  of  that  of  the  first  quality  being  great,  it 
is  equal  in  value  to  a  large  amount  of  labor  ;  whereas  the  resist 
ance  to  the  production  of  that  of  the  lowest  quality  being  small, 
it  exchanges  against  but  a  small  amount  of  human  effort.  The 
value  of  all  is  due  to  the  necessity  for  overcoming  that  resistance, 
and  not,  in  any  manner,  to  the  natural  properties  known  to  exist 
in  the  glass  itself. 

A  farmer  raises  a  hundred  horses,  and  upon  each  expends  a 
similar  quantity  of  food  and  labor.  Arrived  at  maturity,  they 
present  to  view  a  great  variety  of  qualities,  some  having  great 
speed  and  but  little  bottom,  while  others  have  bottom  and  but 
little  speed.  Some  are  good  in  harness,  while  others  are  worth 
little  but  under  the  saddle.  Some  are  heavy,  and  others  are  light. 
Some  have  great  power  of  traction,  while  others  have  little  ;  and 
some  are  high,  while  others  are  low.  Their  values  are  likewise 
different — a  single  one,  perhaps,  commanding  as  large  a  price  as 
.could  be  obtained  for  a  dozen  others.  Nevertheless,  all  those 
•values  are .. but jnea§Hr.es.jQf .. the  resistance  to  be  overcome  in  pro 
ducing  horses  possessed  of  certain  qualities ;  and  all  are  but  the 
^  rew_ards-j of  labor  and  skill  applied  to  this  particular  department 
J  of  production.  From  year  to  year  acquiring  greater  knowledge, 
the  farmer  learns  that  by  care  in  the  selection  of  his  stock  for 
breeding,  he  may  diminish  the  resistance  at  first  experienced  ;  and 
with  each  succeeding  one  is  enabled  to  obtain  a  larger  propor 
tion  of  animals  of  the  highest  quality  —  with  steady  increase  in 
the  return  to  his  physical  and  intellectual  efforts ;  and  as  steady 
decline  in  the  value  of  all  the  stock  remaining  from  previous 
years.  *" 

"  Jenny  Lind  could  get  a  thousand  dollars  for  singing  a  single 
evening :  she  has  doubtless  sung  at  the  opera,  where  young 
females  who  sang  in  the  chorus  received  less  than  a  single  dollar. 
Suppose,  however,  that  some  enterprising  Barnum  should  deter 
mine  that  he  would  train  up  a  new  Jenny  Lind,  or  at  least  a  tole- 


174  CHAPTER   VI.    §  8. 

rable  rival  for  her,  for  his  own  profit.  He  would  at  once  see  it 
necessary  to  multiply  his  chances  of  success,  by  making  the  expe 
riment  with  a  large  number  of  persons  —  some  hundreds  or  thou 
sands.  He  would  be  at  enormous  charges  for  years  for  their 
musical  education ;  and  if  at  last  he  produced  one  prodigy  of 
song,  who  could  earn  by  her  vocal  powers  the  revenue  of  Jenny 
Lind,  he  would  also  have  on  his  hands  a  number  of  inferior  song 
stresses,  who  might  draw  crowded  houses  but  for  the  superior 
attraction  of  his  prima  donna ;  and  scores  of  chorus-singers, 
whose  earnings  would  not  repay  the  outlay  for  their  board,  cloth 
ing,  and  education ;  to  say  nothing  of  the  scores  who  died,  lost 
their  voices,  or  came  to  utter  failure  before  earning  any  thing."* 

Why  is  Jenny  Lind  so  highly  valued  ?  Because  of  the  obstacles 
to  be  overcome  before  an  equal  voice  can  be  reproduced.  So, 
too,  is  it  with  the  fine  horse,  with  the  fine  specimens  of  glass,  and 
with  the  land  that  yields  large  returns  to  labor. — To  what  extent 
are  they  valued  ?  To  that  of  the  cost  of  reproduction,  and  no 
more  ;  and  that  tends  to  decline  with  every  step  in  the  growth  of 
population  and  wealth.  The  same  laws  thus  apply  to  all  matter, 
whatsoever  the  form  in  which  it  exists. 

In  certain  states  of  society,  the  horse  preferred  will  be  the  one 

*  Smith's  Manual  of  Polit.  Econ.,  p.  131.  "  This  illustration,''  says  Mr. 
Smith,  "is  borrowed  —  substituting  Jenny  Lind  for  Rubini — from  an  able 
article  by  M.  Quijano,  in  the  Journal  des  Economistes,  for  May  and  June, 
1852,  in  which  the  imaginary  capitalist,  who  has  succeeded  in  raising  a  Ru 
bini,  answers  a  remonstrance  against  the  extravagant  price  put  upon  his 
singing,  by  pointing  to  the  fact  that  the  average  compensation  of  the  2048 
performers  of  all  kinds  in  the  twenty-five  theatres,  opera-houses,  and  cir 
cuses  of  Paris  is  but  $328  per  annum,  and  would  be  less,  but  for  the  fact 
that  the  government  grants  in  aid  of  the  theatres  amount  to  about  one-third 
of  the  aggregate  salaries  of  their  performers. 

"  Quijano  makes  use  of  this  illustration  incidentally,  the  main  purpose  of 
his  article  being  to  show  that  the  enormous  value  of  the  Clos  Vougeot —  an 
estate  producing  a  famous  wine  —  is  to  be  accounted  for  in  the  same  way, 
and  that  it  does  not  disprove  the  doctrine  that  land  derives  all  its  value  from 
labor.  How  many  fortunes  have  been  wasted  in  vain  endeavors  to  find  the 
proper  spot,  and  make  a  vineyard  which  will  produce  such  wine !  Suppose 
the  fact  be  communicated  to  a  vine-grower,  that  somewhere  within  a  district 
ten  thousand  square  miles  in  extent,  a  few  acres  existed  which  by  proper 
cultivation  would  equal  Clos  Vougeot  in  the  quality  of  its  wines,  and  the 
offer  to  be  made,  either  to  communicate  the  secret  of  their  precise  location 
for  a  sum  equal  to  the  present  market  value  of  that  vineyard,  or  to  sell  the 
same  number  of  acres,  to  be  selected  by  himself,  at  the  average  value  of  the 
entire  tract — which  offer  would  it  be  wise  for  him  to  accept  ?  In  accepting 
the  first,  what  is  it  that  he  pays  for,  except  the  labor  saved  in  making  a 
multitude  of  unprofitable  experiments  ? 


OF    VALUE.  1?5 

fit  for  the  purposes  of  war;  whereas,  in  others,  it  will  be  that 
best  fitted  for  those  of  peace.  At  some  periods,  the  warrior 
will  have  the  preference ;  while  in  others,  the  qualities  of  the 
statesman  or  the  merchant  will  be  most  valued,  and  the  warrior 
will  be  neglected.  So  is  it  with  land,  the  present  value  of  which 
represents  but  a  portion  —  and  generally  a  very  small  one  —  of 
its  cost. 

Labor  is  frequently  wasted  upon  it,  because  its  qualities  are  not 
of  the  particular  description  required  at  the  moment.  The  settler 
who  begins  by  draining  swamps,  throws  away  his  labor,  and  dies 
of  fever.  The  land  is  rich,  but  its  time  has  not  come.  The  man 
who  bores  into  granite,  searching  for  coal,  throws  away  his 
labor.  The  land  will  be  valuable  when  granite  quarries  are 
required,  but  its  time  has  not  come.  The  man  who  attempts  to 
raise  marl  while  surrounded  by  rich  meadow-land,  yet  uncleared, 
loses  his  time.  The  land  &  rich,  but  its  time  has  not  come.  All 
soils  have  qualities  tending  to  render  them  useful  to  man,  and  all 
are  destined  ultimately  to  become  ^utilized  ;  but,  it  being  the  decree 
of  nature  that  the  best — those  fitted  to  yield  the  largest  return  to 
labors-shall  be  obtained  for  his  use  only  at  the  cost  of  long-con 
tinued  and  combined  exertion  ;  their  attainment  is  the  reward  held 
out  to  him  as  the  inducement  to  steady  industry,  prudence,  and 
economy,  and  to  a  constant  observance  of  that  great  law  of  Chris 
tianity  which  requires  every  man  to  respect  in  others  those  rights 
of  person  and  property  that  he  desires  others  to  respect  in  him 
self.  Where  these  exist,  he  is  seen  passing  steadily  and  regularly 
from  poor  soils  to  those  which  are  more  productive,  with  constant 
increase  of  population,  wealth,  prosperity,  and  happiness,  and 
steady  decline  of  value  in  all  the_  lands.,  first,  cultivated  ^except 
wherejthe  constant  application  of  labor  has  tended  to  render  them 
more_^pniiiuctive^  The  last  historian  of  the  world,  prior  to  its 
dissolution,  will  have  to  say  of  the  soils,  as  Byron  said  of  the 
skies  of  Italy  : — 

"  Parting  day 

Dies  like  the  dolphin,  whom  each  pang  imbues 

With  a  new  color  as  it  gasps  away, 

The  last  still  loveliest,  till  —  'tis  gone  —  and  all  is  gray." 

The  value  of  land  Js  a  consequence  of  the  improvement  which 
labor  has  effected  upon  it,  and  it  constitutes  an  important  item  of 


176  CHAPTER   VI.    §  0. 

wealth.  Wealth  tends  to  augment  with  population,  and  the  power 
of  accumulation  increases  with  constantly  acceterating  pace  as  new 
soils  are  brought  into  cultivation  —  each  yielding  in  succession  a 
larger  return  to  labor.  Rent  tends,  therefore,  to  increase  in 
amount,  and  to  diminish  in  its  proportion,  with  the  growth  of 
wealth  and  population.  The  former  is  greatest  in  England,  the 
wealthiest  country  of  Europe.  Diminishing  as  we  pass  thence 
to  the  poorer  countries  of  France,  Germany,  Italy,  and  Spain, 
it  at  length  disappears  totally  among  the  Rocky  Mountains  arid 
the  islands  of  the  Pacific,  where'  land  is  valueless. 

§  9.  Robinson  Crusoe  was  surrounded  by  objects  capable  of 
being  rendered  useful  to  him  either  as  food  or  clothing,  or  as  ma 
chinery  by  help  of  which  he  might  procure  the  various  commodities 
required  for  the  satisfaction  of  his  wa^nts ;  but  in  his  then  condi 
tion  he  was  unable  to  command  their  aid.  The  bird  on  the  wing, 
and  the  squirrel  that  jumped  from  tree  to  tree,  were  as  fully  com 
petent  to  satisfy  his  appetite  for  food  as  those  he  had  caught  in 
his  trap  ;  but  they  had  for  him  no  UTILITY.  The  water  abounded 
in  fish,  but  he  had  no  hook  with  which  to  take  them.  It  would 
float  a  canoe,  but — having  no  knife,  or  axe,  with  which  to  fell  a  tree 
or  hollow  it  out — its  supporting  power  was  to  him  as  useless  as  if 
it  had  not  existed.  It  was  capable  of  producing  steam  that  could 
be  made  to  do  the  work  of  thousands  of  laborers,  but  he  possessed 
none  of  the  machinery  by  help  of  which  he  might  command  its 
services.  The  air  abounded  in  electricity,  susceptible  of  being 
rendered  useful ;  but  its  uses  were  to  him  unknown.  He  being 
weak  and  nature  being  strong,  the  resistance  offered  by  her,  to 
the  gratification  of  his  desires,  was  too  great  to  be  overcome  by 
his  unassisted  powers. 

With  time,  however,  we  find  him  calling  to  his  aid  the  various 
qualities  of  wood  —  its  elasticity,  hardness,  and  weight ;  next, 
obtaining  a  cutting  instrument  by  which  other  forces  are  made  to 
contribute  to  his  purposes ;  again,  hollowing  out  a  tree  and  re 
ducing  to  his  service  the  supporting  power  of  water ;  and  thus 
gradually  utilizing  the  various  forces  existing  in  nature  and  await 
ing  demand  for  their  services. 

The  capability  of  being  rendered  useful  to  man  belongs  to  every 
atom  of  matter  of  which  the  earth  is  composed — existing  as  much 


OF    VALUE.  177 

in  the  coal  that  lies  thousands  of  feet  below  the  surface,  as  in  that 
which  now  burns  in  the  grate ;  and  as  much  in  the  ore  while 
remaining  in  the  mine,  as  in  that  which  has  been  converted  into 
stoves,  grates,  or  railroad  bars.  To  render  them  useful  requires 
in  most  cases  a  considerable  amount  of  physical  and  intellectual 
effort ;  and  it  is  because  of  the  necessity  for  that  effort  that  man 
is  led  to  attach  the  idea  of  value  to  the  commodities  and  things 
that  have  been  so  obtained. 

Being  in  some  cases  supplied  to  him  in  abundance,  in  the  pre 
cise  form,  and  at  the  precise  place  at  which  they  are  required  —  as 
is  the  case  with  the  air  we  breathe  —  they  are  then  wholly  without 
value.  In  others,  they  are  furnished  by  nature  in  the  form  in 
which  they  are  used,  as  in  the  case  of  water  and  electricity ;  but 
even  these  require  change  of  place,  and  have,  therefore,  a  value 
in  our  estimation  equal  to  the  effort  required  for  overcoming  the 
resistance  to  their  attainment.  In  a  third  —  and  the  most  nume 
rous  class  of  cases  —  they  require  to  be  changed  in  place  and  in 
form;  and  have  jthen  a  much  higher  value,  because  of  the  in 
creased  resistance  to  be  overcome. 

That  man  may  be  enabled  to  effect  these  changes,  he  must  first 
utilize  those  faculties  by  which  he  is  distinguished  from  the 
brute.  In  the  isolated  man  they  are  latent,  association  being 
needed  for  stimulating  them  into  the  motion  required  for  the 
production  of  force.  Had  Ba«on,  Newton,  Leibnitz,  or  Des 
Cartes,  been  placed  alone  upon  an  island,  their  capacity  for  being 
useful  to  their  fellow-men  would  have  been  just  the  same  that  we  see 
it  to  have  been  ;  but  their  faculties  would  have  lain  dormant,  and 
without  utility.  As  it  was — being  enabled  to  associate  with  others 
like  and  unlike  themselves — their  various  idiosyncrasies  were  stimu 
lated  to  activity,  and  individuality  became  more  and  more  deve 
loped — with  constant  increase  in  the  knowledge  accumulated,  and 
in  the  power  of  further  accumulation. 

That  "  knowledge  is  power,"  we  are  every  day  assured  ;  and 
if  we  desire  evidence  of  the  fact,  we  need  only  to  observe,  on  the 
one  hand,  how  great  are  the  poverty  and  weakness  of  various 
communities  of  the  earth,  occupying  lands  abounding  in  all  the 
qualities  required  for  enabling  their  owners  to  become  rich  and 
strong — which  yet  remain  unimproved  for  want  of  that  power  of 
combination  so  indispensable  to  the  development  of  the  intel- 


178  CHAPTER   VI.    §  9. 

lectual  faculties  ;  and,  on  the  other,  how  great  are  the  wealth  and 
strength  of  others,  whose  lands  appear  to  be  deficient  in  almost 
all  the  qualities  required  for  the  production  of  either  wealth  or 
strength.  Few  countries  offer  to  their  inhabitants  a  poorer 
soil  for  cultivation  than  is  found  in  our  Eastern  States  —  and 
they  have  little  coal,  while  altogether  deficient  as  regards  most 
of  the  metallic  products  of  the  earth  ;  and  yet  New  England  occu 
pies  a  high  position  among  the  communities  of  the  world,  because 
among  her  people  the  habit  of  association  is  found  existing  to  an 
extraordinary  extent— with  corresponding  activity  of  their  facul 
ties.  Turning  our  eyes  to  Brazil,  we  find  a  picture  directly  the 
reverse — nature  there  furnishing  a  soil  rich  for  all  the  purposes  of 
cultivation,  and  abounding  in  the  most  valuable  minerals  and 
metals  —  all  of  which  remain  almost  altogether  useless,  for  want 
of  that  activity  of  mind  which  results  necessarily  from  the  asso 
ciation  of  man  with  his  fellow-men. 

The  capacity  for  obtaining  command  over  the  various  powers 
of  nature,  is  a  force  existing  in  man — latent,  while  he  is  compelled 
to  live  and  work  alone,  but  more  and  more  stimulated  into  acti 
vity  as  he  is  more  and  more  enabled  to  work  in  combination  with 
his  fellow-men. 

The  capability  of  being  useful  to  man  exists,  as  has  already 
been  said,  in  all  matter ;  but,  in  order  that  it  may  have  utility, 
man  must  have  the  power  required  for  overcoming  the  resisting 
force  of  nature  —  and  that  he  cannot  have  in  a  state  of  isolation. 
Place  him  in  the  midst  of  a  large  community  where  employment 
is  infinitely  diversified,  and  his  faculties  become  developed. 
With  individuality  comes  the  power  of  association,  always  ac 
companied  with  that  rapid  motion  of  the  intellect  whence  results 
power  over  nature ;  and  every  step  in  that  direction  is  but  the 
preparation  for  a  new  and  greater  one.  A  century  since,  he  was 
surrounded  everywhere  by  electricity,  capable  of  being  rendered 
useful  to  him ;  but  he  was  totally  deficient  in  the  knowledge  re 
quired  for  compelling  it  to  do  his  work.  Franklin  made  one 
step  in  identifying  lightning  with  what  had  before  been  known  as 
electricity ;  and  since  then,  Arago,  Ampere,  Biot,  Henry,  Morse, 
and  many  others,  have  been  engaged  in  the  effort  to  obtain  the 
knowledge  of  its  qualities  required  for  controlling  its  movements 
and  utilizing  its  powers.  That  having  been  acquired,  instead  of 


OF    VALUE.  179 

looking  upon  the  aurora,  and  upon  the  lightning,  as  mere  objects 
of  stupid  wonder,  we  now  regard  them  but  as  the  manifestation 
of  the  existence  of  a  great  force  that  can  be  made  to  carry  our 
messages,  plate  our  knives  and  forks,  and  propel  our  ships.  ^ 

The. utility  of  things  is  the  measure  of  man'ji^oicer  over  nature 
. —  and  this  grows  with  the  power  of  combination  among  men. 
Their  value,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  measure  of  nature  s  power 
over  man — and  this  declines  with  the  growth  of  the  power  of  com 
bination.  The  two  thus  move  in  opposite  directions,  and  are  . 
always  found  existing  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  each  other. 

The  waste  of  food  resulting  from  the  various  processes  to  which 
corn  is  subjected,  with  a  view  to  improvement  in  the  appear 
ance  of  the  bread  made  from  it,  is  estimated  at  one-fourth  of  the 
whole  quantity  —  and  this,  upon  the  twenty  millions  of  quarters 
required  for  Great  Britain,  is  equal  to  five  millions.  Were  all 
this  economized,  the  utility  of  corn  would  be  greatly  increased  — 
but  the  corresponding  increase  in  the  facility  with  which  food 
could  be  obtained,  would  be  attended  with  large  decline  of  value  ; 
and  so  is  it,  as  we  see,  with  all  other  commodities  and  things. 
As  improved  steam-engines  enable  us  to  obtain  constantly  increas 
ing  power  from  the  same  quantity  of  coal,  the  utility  of  coal  in 
creases — but  its  value  declines,  because  of  the  increased  facility  of 
obtaining  iron  for  the  construction  of  new  engines,  by  help  of 
which  to  obtain  more  coal.  As  the  old  road  becomes  more  use 
ful  from  its  more  constant  use  by  a  growing  population,  its 
value  declines ;  and  this  it  does,  because  of  the  growing  facility 
of  obtaining  new  and  better  roads.  The  man  who  has  to  descend 
a  hill  to  the  distant  spring  pays  largely  in  labor  for  a  supply  of 
water  for  his  family ;  but  when  he  has  sunk  a  well,  he  obtains  a 
supply  quadrupled  in  quantity  in  return  to  a  twentieth  part  of 
the  muscular  effort.  The  utility  having  increased,  the  exchange 
able  value  has  greatly  diminished.  Next,  he  places  a  pump  in 
the  well,  and  here  we  find  a  similar  effect  produced.  Again, 
with  the  growth  of  population  and  wealth,  we  find  him  associat 
ing  with  his  neighbors  to  give  utility  to  great  rivets,  by  directing 
them  through  streets  and  houses ;  and  now  he  is  supplied  so 
cheaply  that  the  smallest  coin  in  circulation  pays  for  more  than 
his  predecessors  could  obtain  at  the  cost  of  a  whole  day's  labor — 
as  a  consequence  of  which  his  family  consumes  more  in  a  day  than 


180  CHAPTER   VI.    §  9. 

had  before,  of  necessity,  sufficed  for  a  month ;  and  has  its  bene 
fits  almost  free  of  charge. 

With  every  increase  in  the  facility  of  obtaining  food  from  the 
earth,  by  reason  of  passing  from  the  poorer  to  the  better  soils, 
man  obtains  a  constantly  increasing  power  to  utilize  still  richer 
ones  —  and  the  more  rapid  that  increase,  the  more  rapid  is  the 
decline  in  the  value  of  the  soils  first  cultivated.  Such,  too,  is  the 
case  with  the  precious  metals,  whose  value  declines  as  their  utility 
increases.  The  vast  mass  of  gold  and  silver  hoarded  in  France  is 
useless  to  the  community ;  and  to  the  fact  that  it  is  hoarded  is  due 
the  high  value  in  which  the  precious  metals  are  there  held.  Were 
it  all  set  free,  money  would  become  more  abundant,  and  interest 
would  tend  to  fall,  while  labor  would  rise.  Looking  around,  we 
see  everywhere,  that  it  is  in  the  countries  in  which  those  metals 
render  the  smallest  service  to  man,  that  they  are  the  most  valued 
—  and  that,  here,  their  value  in  labor  and  land  declines  as  we 
pass  towards  that  community  in  which  they  render  the  largest 
service  —  New  England;  and  especially  in  the  manufacturing 
States  of  Rhode  Island  and  Massachusetts.  Such  being  the 
case,  we  can  readily  see  why  it  is  that  they  tend  everywhere  from 
those  countries  in  which  interest  is  high,  and  to  those  in  which  it 
is  low.  In  the  latter,  their  labor  value  is  steadily  diminishing  ; 
and  this  diminution  is  necessarily  accompanied  by  a  constant  in 
crease  of  ability  to  apply  them  to  the  various  purposes  for  which 
they  are  fitted;  sometimes  to  gilding  books — and  at  others  con 
verting  them  into  knives,  forks,  spoons,  or  otherwise  changing  their 
forms,  so  as  to  fit  them  for  serving  the  purposes,  or  gratifying  the 
tastes,  of  their  owners.  It  is  where,  and  when,  interest  tends  down 
ward,  that  their  use  for  all  such  purposes  most  rapidly  extends — 
thus  proving  that,  with  increased  utility,  value  diminishes ;  and 
where,  and  when,  interest  tends  upward,  that  their  use  most  rapidly 
declines — furnishing  further  proof  that  utility  and  value  are  always 
in  the  inverse  ratio  of  each  other. 

The  utility  of  matter  increases  with  the  growth  of  the  power  of 
association  and  combination  among  men  ;  and  every  step  in  that 
direction  is  accompanied  by  a  decline  in  the  value  of  commodities 
required  for  their  use,  and  an  increase  in  the  facility  with  which 
wealth  may  be  accumulated. 


OF    WEALTH.  181 


OF    WEALTH. 

§  1.  ROBINSON  CRUSOE  had  made  a  bow,  and  had  thus  acquired 
wealth.  In  what,  however,  did  that  wealth  consist  ?  In  the  pos 
session  of  the  instrument  ?  Assuredly  not ;  but  in  the  power  that 
it  gave  him  over  the  natural  properties  of  the  wood  and  the  cord 
—  enabling  him  to  substitute  the  elasticity  of  the  one,  and  the 
tenacity  of  the  other,  for  the  muscular  contraction  by  help  of 
which,  alone,  he  had  thus  far  been  enabled  to  obtain  supplies  of 
food.  Having  made  a  canoe,  he  found  his  wealth  increased, 
because  by  help  of  his  new  machine  he  could  command  the  ser 
vices  of  water — and,  as  nature  always  works  gratuitously,  all  the 
addition  he  was  now  enabled  to  make  to  his  supplies,  was  obtained 
wholly  free  of  cost.  Having  erected  a  pole  in  his  canoe,  and 
placed  upon  it  a  skin  by  way  of  sail,  he  was  enabled  to  command 
the  services  of  the  wind,  and  thus  still  further  to  increase  his 
power  to  move  from  place  to  place ;  and  so  did  his  wealth  stead 
ily  increase. 

Let  us  suppose,  however,  that  instead  of  having  been  led  by 
observation  of  the  properties  of  wood  to  make  a  bow,  he  had 
found  one,  and  had  been  so  deficient  in  knowledge  as  to  be 
unable  to  use  it ;  would  his  wealth  in  this  case  have  been  in 
creased  ?  Certainly  not.  The  bow  would  have  been  as  useless 
as  the  trees  with  which  the  land  was  covered.  Or,  suppose  he 
had  found  a  canoe,  and  had  been  as  ignorant  of  the  properties  of 
water,  or  of  wood,  as  we  may  well  suppose  to  have  been  the  case 
with  the  wild  men  of  Germany  and  of  India ;  would  he  not  have 
remained  as  poor  as  he  before  had  been  ?  That  such  would  have 
been  the  case,  cannot  be  doubted.  If  so,  then  wealth  cannot  con 
sist  in  the  mere  possession  of  an  instrument,  unconnected  with  the 
knowledge  how  to  use  it.  Were  a  thousand  bows  given  to  a  man 
who  had  been  blind  from  birth,  he  would  be  no  richer  than  before 


L82  CHAPTER    VIT.    §  1. 

—  an4  were  we  to  transfer  to  the  savages  of  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains,  all  property  in  the  mills  and  furnaces  of  the  Union,  they 
would  find  therein  no  addition  to  their  wealth  —  for  their  lia 
bility  to  perish  of  hunger,  or  of  cold,  would  remain  unchanged ; 
although  they  had  thus  become  the  owners  of  machinery  capable 
of  producing  all  the  implements  required  for  enabling  them  to 
obtain  food  and  clothing  in  abundance,  were  they  but  possessed 
of  knowledge  Books  and  newspapers  would  not  be  wealth  to 
the  man  who  could  not  read,  but  food  would  be  —  and  he  might 
gladly  give  a  whole  library  for  as  much  grain  as  would  support 
him  for  a  single  year. 

For  thousands  of  years,  the  people  of  England  were  in  posses 
sion  of  almost  boundless  supplies  of  that  fuel,  a  bushel  of  which  is 
capable  of  raising  one  hundred  thousand  pounds  a  foot  in  a 
minute,  and  thus  doing  as  much  work  as  could  be  done  by  hun 
dreds  of  men ;  and  yet  that  fuel  was  not  wealth,  because  of  the 
want  of  knowledge  how  to  utilize  its  powers.  The  force  was 
there,  latent ;  but  it  was  not  until  the  days  of  Watt,  that  man  was 
enabled  to  compel  it  to  labor  in  his  service.  So  it  has  been  with 
the  anthracite  coal-mines  of  Pennsylvania.  That  fuel  was  purer 
and  better  than  any  other  —  and  capable,  therefore,  of  doing  a 
greater  amount  of  work  ;  but,  for  that  reason,  it  required  a  higher 
degree  of  knowledge  for  the  development  of  its  latent  powers. 
The  greater  the  power  to  be  useful  —  the  greater  the  amount  of 
utility  latent  in  a  commodity,  or  thing — the  greater  is  always  the 
amount  of  resistance  to  be  overcome,  in  subjecting  it  to  the  control 
of  man.  That  once  done,  the  power  thus  acquired,  centres 
in  THE  MAN,  whose  value  steadily  rises,  as  the  utility  of  the  raw 
material  by  which  he  is  surrounded,  becomes  more  and  more 
developed. 

The  first  poor  cultivator  commences,  as  we  have  seen,  his  ope 
rations  on  the  hill-side.  Below  him  are  lands  that  have,  for  ages, 
received  the  washings  of  those  above,  as  well  as  the  leaves  of 
trees,  and  the  fallen  trees  themselves,  all  of  which  have,  from  time 
immemorial,  decayed  and  become  incorporated  with  the  earth  — 
thus  forming  soils  fitted  to  yield  the  largest  returns  to  labor ;  yet 
for  that  reason  are  they  inaccessible.  Their  character  exhibits 
itself  in  the  large  trees  with  which  they  are  covered,  and  in  their 
capacity  for  retaining  the  water  required  for  aiding  the  process 


OF    WEALTH.  183 

of  decomposition  ;  but  the  poor  settler  has  no  power  either  to 
clear  them  of  their  timber,  or  to  drain  them  of  the  superfluous 
moisture.  He  begins  on  the  hill-side  ;  but  with  the  increase  of 
his  family,  and  the  improvement  of  his  machinery  of  cultivation, 
we  find  him  descending  the  hill,  and  obtaining  not  only  more 
food  for  himself,  but  also  the  means  of  feeding  the  horse,  or 
the  ox,  required  to  assist  him  in  his  labors.  Aided  by  the 
manure  yielded  to  him  by  the  better  lands,  we  see  his  successors 
next  retracing  his  steps,  improving  the  hill-side,  and  compelling 
it  to  yield  a  return  twice  greater  than  had  been  at  first  obtained. 
With  each  step  down  the  hill,  they  obtain  still  larger  reward  for 
labor ;  and  from  each  they  return,  with  increased  power,  to  the 
cultivation  of  the  original  poor  soil.  They  have  now  horses  and 
oxen  ;  and  while,  by  their  aid,  they  extract  from  the  new  soils  the 
manure  that  had  for  ages  accumulated,  they  have  also  carts  and 
wagons  to  carry  it  up  the  hill ;  and  with  every  additional  step, 
their  rewards  become  increased,  while  their  labors  are  lessened. 
They  go  back  to  the  sand  and  raise  the  marl,  with  which  they 
cover  the  surface ;  or  return  to  the  clay  and  sink  into  the  lime 
stone,  by  aid  of  which  they  double  their  products.  They  are  all 
the  time  making  a  machine  which  feeds  them  while  making  it, 
and  which  increases  in  its  powers  the  more  there  is  taken  from  it. 
At  first,  it  was  worthless  ;  but  now — having  fed  and  clothed  them 
for  years  —  it  has  become  so  greatly  useful,  that  those  who  might 
desire  to  use  it  would  pay  largely  for  the  permission  so  to  do. 

The  earth  is  a  great  machine  given  to  man  to  be  fashioned  to 
his  purpose.  The  more  he  fashions  it,  the  better  it  feeds  him, 
because  each  step  is  but  preparatory  to  a  new  one  more  product 
ive  than  the  last — requiring  less  labor  and  yielding  larger  return. 
The  labor  of  clearing  is  great ;  yet  the  return  is  small,  the  earth 
being  covered  with  stumps,  and  filled  with  roots.  With  each 
year  the  latter  decay,  and  the  ground  becomes  enriched  ;  while  the 
labor  of  ploughing  is-  diminished.  At  length,  the  stumps  having 
disappeared,  the  return  is  doubled,  while  the  labor  is  less  by  one- 
half  than  at  first.  To  forward  this  process,  the  owner  has  done 
nothing  but  crop  the  ground — nature  having  done  the  rest.  The 
aid  she  thus  grants  him,  yields  far  more  food  than  had  been  at 
first  obtained  in  return  to  the  labor  of  clearing  the  land. 
This,  however,  is  not  all.  The  surplus  thus  yielded  has  given 


184  CHAPTER   VII.    §  1. 

him  the  means  of  improving  the  poorer  lands — furnishing  manure 
with  which  to  enrich  them — and  thus  has  he  trebled,  or  quadrupled, 
his  original  return  without  further  effort ;  that  which  he  saves  in 
working  the  new  soils,  sufficing  to  carry  the  manure  to  the  older 
ones.  He  is  thus  obtaining  a  daily  increased  power  over  the 
various  treasures  of  the  earth. 

With  every  operation  connected  with  the  subjection  of  the 
earth  to  the  control  of  man,  the  result  is  the  same  —  the  first  step 
being,  invariably,  the  most  costly  one,  and  the  least  productive.* 
The  drain  commences  necessarily  near  the  stream,  where  the  labor 
is  heaviest ;  yet  it  frees  from  water  but  little  land.  Further  distant, 
the  same  quantity  of  labor,  profiting  by  what  has  been  already 
done,  frees  thrice  the  extent ;  and  now  the  most  perfect  system  of 
thorough  drainage  may  be  established  with  less  effort  than  had 
been  at  first  required  for  one  of  the  most  imperfect  kind.  To 
bring  the  lime  into  connection  with  the  clay,  upon  fifty  acres,  is 
lighter  labor  than  had  been  the  clearing  of  a  single  one  ;  yet  the 
process  doubles  the  return  for  every  acre  of  the  fifty.  The  man 
who  requires  a  little  fuel  for  his  own  use,  expends  much  labor  in 
opening  the  neighboring  vein  of  coal.  To  enlarge  this,  so  as  to 
double  the  product,  is  a  work  of  comparatively  small  effort ;  as  is 
the  next  enlargement,  by  which  he  is  enabled  to  use  a  wagon, 
giving  him  a  return  fifty  times  greater  than  had  been  obtained 
while  still  dependent  upon  his  own  unassisted  powers.  To  sink 
a  shaft  to  the  first  vein  below  the  surface,  and  erect  a  steam- 
engine,  are  expensive  operations  —  but  then  to  sink  to  a  second, 
and  tunnel  to  a  third,  are  trifles  in  comparison  with  the  first ;  yet 
each  is  equally  productive.  The  first  line  of  railroad  runs  by 
houses  and  towns  occupied  by  a  few  hundred  thousand  persons 
Little  branches  are  next  made,  costing  altogether  far  less  labor 
than  the  first,  but  bringing  into  connection  with  it  probably  thrice 
the  amount  of  population.  The  trade  increasing,  a  second  track, 
a  third,  or  a  fourth,  may  be  required.  The  original  one  facilitating 


*  The  French  proverb —  Ce  n'est  que  le  premier  pas  qui  coute  —  is  true  in 
regard  to  all  the  relations  of  life ;  but  in  none  is  it  more  emphatically  so  than 
in  reference  to  the  occupation  of  land.  Such  being  the  case,  it  will  readily 
be  seen  how  destructive  of  the  best  interests  of  man  must  be  a  system  which^ 
looking  to  the  constant  exhaustion  of  the  soil,  produces  a  perpetually  in 
creasing  necessity  for  commencing  the  work  of  cultivation  on  new  lands,  to 
be  in  their  turn  exhausted. 


OF   WEALTH.  185 

the  passage  of  the  materials  and  the  removal  of  the  obstructions, 
three  new  ones  may  now  be  made  for  less  than  had  been  expended 
upon  the  first. 

All  labor  thus  given  to  fashioning  the  great  machine  is  but  the 
prelude  to  its  further  application,  with  increased  returns  and  rise 
of  wages  ;  and  hence  it  is  that  portions  of  the  machine,  as  it  ex 
ists,  invariably  exchange,  when  brought  to  market,  for  far  less 
labor  than  they  have  cost.  The  man  who  cultivated  the  thin 
soils  was  happy  to  obtain  a  hundred  bushels  for  his  year's  work — 
but  with  the  progress  of  himself  and  his  neighbors  down  the  hill, 
into  the  more  fertile  soils,  wages  have  risen,  and  two  hundred 
bushels  may  be  now  required.  His  farm  will  yield  a  thousand 
bushels  —  but  it  requires  the  labor  of  four  men,  who  must  have 
two  hundred  bushels  each ;  and  the  surplus  is  but  two  hundred 
bushels.  At  twenty  years'  purchase,  this  gives  a  capital  of  four 
thousand  bushels,  or  the  equivalent  of  twenty  years'  wages ; 
whereas  it  may  have  cost  —  in  the  labor  of  himself,  his  sons,  and 
his  assistants — the  equivalent  of  a  hundred  years  of  labor,  or  per 
haps  far  more.  During  all  this  time,  however,  it  has  fed  and 
clothed  them  all ;  and  the  farm  has  been  produced  by  insensible 
contributions  made  from  year  to  year,  unthought  of  and  unfelt. 

It  is  now  worth  twenty  years'  wages,  because  its  owner  has  for 
years  taken  from  it  a  thousand  bushels  annually  ;  but  when  it  had 
lain  for  centuries,  accumulating  power  to  serve  the  purposes  of 
man,  it  was  worth  nothing.  Such  is  the  case  with  the  earth 
everywhere.  The  more  there  is  taken  from  it  the  more  there  is 
found  to  exist.  When  the  coal-mines  of  England  were  untouched, 
they  were  valueless.  Now  their  value  is  almost  countless ;  yet 
the  land  contains  abundant  supplies  for  thousands  of  years.  Iron 
ore,  a  century  since,  being  held  in  low  esteem,  leases  were  granted 
at  almost  nominal  rents.  Now,  notwithstanding  the  great  quanti 
ties  that  have  been  removed,  such  leases  are  deemed  equivalent  to 
the  possession  of  large  fortunes  ;  although  the  amount  of  ore  else 
where  known  to  exist,  is  probably  a  hundred  times  increased. 

The  rich  lands  above  described — the  coal,  the  lime,  and  the  ore 
— were,  a  century  since  as  much  as  they  are  now,  possessed  of  the 
power  to  contribute  to  the  comfort  and  enjoyment  of  man ;  yet 
they  were  not  wealth,  because  he  himself  was  deficient  in  the 
knowledge  required  for  enabling  him  to  compel  them  to  labor  in 

YOL.  I.— 13 


186  CHAPTER   VII.^  §  2. 

his  service.  Their  utility  was  latent,  waiting  the  action  of  the 
human  mind  for  its  development. 

In  the  man  of  that  day  we  find,  however,  a  state  of  things  pre 
cisely  similar.  His  powers  were  then  as  great  as  are  those  of  the 
men  of  the  present  day ;  but  they,  too,  were  latent.  His  brain 
was  ready  to  serve  him,  had  he  made  the  demand  for  its  services  ; 
but  that  he  could  not  do.  It,  too,  would  have  labored  gratui 
tously  ;  not  only  so,  but  by  lessening  the  demand  upon  his  mus 
cular  powers,  it  would  largely  have  diminished  the  quantity  of 
food  required  for  repairing  the  waste  consequent  upon  exertion. 
The  time  required  for  the  supply  of  his  necessities  would  thus  have 
been  reduced,  with  corresponding  increase  in  the  quantity  at  his 
command  for  further  study  of  the  powers  of  nature  —  and  for 
preparation  of  the  machinery  needed  for  subjecting  them  to  his 
service. 

Wealth  consists  in  the  power  to  command  ike  always  gratuitous 
services  of  nature  —  whether  rendered  by  the  brain  of  man,  or  by 
the  matter  by  which  he  is  surrounded,  and  upon  which  it  is 
required  to  operate.  The  greater  the  power  of  association  —  the 
greater  the  diversity  of  the  demands  upon  the  human  intellect  — 
the  greater,  as  we  have  seen,  must  be  the  development  of  the 
peculiar  faculties  —  or  individuality  —  of  each  member  of  the 
society  ;  and  the  greater  the  capacity  for  association.  With  the 
latter  comes  increase  of  power  over  nature  and  over  himself;  and 
the  more  perfect  his  capacity  for  self-government,  the  more  rapid 
must  be  the  motion  of  society — the  greater  the  tendency  towards 
further  progress  —  and  the  more  rapid  the  growth  of  wealth. 

The  supply  of  power  waiting  the  demands  of  man  is,  as  has 
been  said,  unlimited.  To  the  world  at  large,  it  is  what  the  accu 
mulations  in  the  robbers'  cave  were  to  Ali  Baba,  who  needed  but 
the  magic  word  to  make  the  doors  fly  open,  and  thus  to  become 
master  of  their  wealth.  To  enable  man  to  do  the  same,  and  thus 
to  do,  in  his  case,  all  that  the  genii,  in  the  other,  had  power  to  do, 
he  has  only  to  qualify  himself  for  crying  "open  sesame,"  by  com 
bining  his  efforts  with  those  of  his  fellow-men. 

§  2.  The  greater  the  tendency  towards  combination  of  action 
among  men,  the  greater  is  the  rapidity  with  which  knowledge  is 
diffused,  power  is  gained,  and  wealth  accumulated.  That  there 


OF   WEALTH.  187 

may  be  combination,  there  must  be  difference — and  that  the  latter 
may  exist,  there  must  be  diversity  of  employment.  Where  that 
is  found,  man  is  seen  to  be  obtaining  constantly  increasing  power 
over  nature  and  over  himself — thus  acquiring  freedom  in  the 
direct  ratio  of  the  development  of  his  latent  powers. 

In  the  early  periods  of  society,  when  men  cultivate  the  poor 
soils,  there  can  be  little  association,  and,  consequently,  little  com 
bination  of  action.  Having  neither  horse  nor  cart,  the  solitary 
settler  is  dependent,  mainly,  upon  his  hands  arid  arms  for  power 
to  harvest  his  little  crop.  Carrying  a  hide  to  his  place  of  ex 
change,  distant  many  miles,  he  seeks  to  obtain  for  it  leather,  shoes, 
or  cloth. — Population  increasing,  roads  are  made,  and  richer  soils 
are  cultivated.  The  store  and  the  mill  coming  nearer  to  him,  he 
obtains  shoes  and  flour  with  the  use  of  less  machinery  of  exchange  ; 
and  having  now  more  leisure  for  the  preparation  of  his  machine, 
the  returns  to  labor  are  increased.  More  people  now  obtaining 
food  from  the  same  surface,  new  places  of  exchange  appear. 
The  wool  being,  on  the  spot,  converted  into  cloth,  he  exchanges 
directly  with  the  clothier.  The  saw-mill  being  at  hand,  he 
exchanges  with  the  miller.  The  tanner  gives  him  leather  for 
his  hides,  and  the  paper-maker  exchanges  paper  for  his  rags. 
His  power  to  command  the  use  of  the  machinery  of  exchange  is 
thus  a  constantly  augmenting  one ;  whereas  his  necessity  for  its 
use  is  a  constantly  decreasing  one  —  there  being,  with  each  suc 
cessive  year,  a  greater  tendency  towards  having  the  consumer 
and  the  producer  take  their  places  by  each  other's  side.  With 
each,  he  finds  increase  of  power  to  devote  his  time  and  mind  to  the 
process  of  fashioning  the  great  instrument  to  which  he  is  indebted 
for  food  and  wool ;  and  thus  it  is  that  increase  of  the  consuming 
population  is  essential  to  the  progress  of  production. 

The  loss  from  the  use  of  machinery  of  exchange,  is  in  the  ratio 
of  the  bulk  of  the  article  to  be  exchanged.  Food  stands  first ; 
fuel  next ;  stone  for  building,  third  ;  iron,  fourth  ;  cotton,  fifth  ; 
and  so  on  —  diminishing  until  we  come  to  laces  and  nutmegs. 
The  raw  material  being  that  in  the  formation  of  which  the  earth 
has  most  co-operated,  and  by  the  production  of  which  the  land 
is  most  improved  —  the  nearer  the  place  of  exchange  or  conver 
sion  can  be  brought  to  the  place  of  production,  the  less  must  be 
the  loss  in  the  process,  and  the  greater  the  power  of  accumulat- 


188  CHAPTER   VII.    §  2. 

ing  capital  to  aid  in  the  production  of  further  wealth.  That  this 
must  necessarily  be  so,  will  be  obvious  to  all  who  reflect  that,  in 
physical  science,  it  is  a  law,  that  whatever  tends  to  diminish  the 
quantity  of  machinery  required,  tends  to  the  diminution  of  friction, 
and  to  the  increase  of  power. 

The  man  who  raises  food  on  his  own  land,  is  building  up  the 
machine  for  doing  so  to  more  advantage  in  the  following  year 
His  neighbor,  to  whom  it  is  given,  on  condition  of  sitting  still, 
loses  a  year's  work  on  his  machine,  and  all  he  has  gained  has 
been  the  pleasure  of  idling  away  his  time.  If  he  has  employed 
himself  and  his  horses  and  wagon  in  bringing  it  home,  the  same 
number  of  days  that  would  have  been  required  for  raising  it,  he 
has  misemployed  his  time,  for  the  farm  is  unimproved.  He  has 
wasted  labor  and  manure.  As  nobody,  however,  gives,  it  is  obvi 
ous  that  the  man  who  has  a  farm,  and  obtains  his  food  elsewhere, 
must  pay  for  raising  it,  and  also  for  transporting  it ;  that  although 
he  may  have  obtained  as  good  wages  in  some  other  pursuit,  his 
farm,  instead  of  being  improved  by  a  year's  cultivation,  is  dete 
riorated  by  a  year's  neglect ;  and  that  he  is  a  poorer  man  than  he 
would  have  been  had  he  raised  his  own  food. 

The  article  of  next  greatest  bulk  is  fuel.  While  warming  his 
house,  he  is  clearing  his  land.  He  would  lose  by  sitting  idle,  if 
his  neighbor  brought  his  fuel  to  him,  and  still  more  if  he  had  to 
spend  the  same  time  in  hauling  it ;  because  he  would  be  wearing 
out  his  wagon,  and  losing  the  manure.  Were  he  to  hire  himself 
and  his  wagon  to  another,  and  for  the  same  quantity  of  fuel  he 
could  have  cut  on  his  own  property,  he  would  be  a  loser,  for  his 
farm  would  be  uncleared. 

In  taking  the  stone  from  his  own  fields  to  build  his  house,  he 
gains  doubly,  for  as  his  house  is  built,  his  land  is  being  cleared. 
If  he  remains  idle,  and  lets  his  neighbor  bring  him  stone,  he 
loses  —  for  his  fields  remain  unfit  for  cultivation.  If  he  per 
forms  as  much  work  for  a  neighbor,  receiving  the  same  apparent 
wages,  he  is  a  loser,  by  the  fact  that  he  has  yet  to  remove  the 
stones  —  and,  until  they  shall  be  removed,  he  cannot  cultivate 
his  land. 

With  every  improvement  in  the  machinery  of  exchange,  there 
is  a  diminution  in  the  proportion  which  that  machinery  bears  to 
the  mass  of  commodities  susceptible  of  being  exchanged — because 


OF   WEALTH.  189 

of  the  extraordinary  increase  of  product  consequent  upon  the  in 
creased  labor  that  may  be  given  to  building  up  the  great  machine. 
It  is  a  matter  of  daily  observation,  that  the  demand  for  horses  and 
men  increases  as  railroads  drive  them  from  the  turnpikes  —  and 
the  reason  is,  that  the  farmer's  means  of  improving  his  land  in 
crease  more  rapidly  than  men  and  horses  for  the  work.  The  man 
who  has,  thus  far,  sent  to  market  his  half-fed  cattle,  accompanied 
by  horses  and  men  to  drive  them — and  wagons  and  horses  loaded 
with  hay,  or  turnips,  with  which  to  feed  them  on  the  road,  and  to 
fatten  them  when  at  market  —  now  fattens  them  on  the  ground, 
and  sends  them  by  railroad  ready  for  the  slaughter-house ;  and 
thus  is  his  demand  for  machinery  of  exchange  greatly  diminished. 
He  keeps  his  men,  his  horses  and  wagons,  and  the  refuse  of  his 
hay  and  oats,  at  home ;  the  former  employed  in  ditching  and 
draining,  while  the  latter  fertilizes  the  soil  he  has  thus  far  cul 
tivated.  His  production  doubling,  he  accumulates  rapidly, 
while  the  people  around  him  have  more  to  eat,  more  to  spend  in 
clothing,  and  can  accumulate  more  themselves.  He  wants  labor 
ers  in  the  field,  and  these  require  clothes  and  dwellings.  The 
shoemaker  and  the  carpenter,  finding  that  there  is  a  demand 
for  their  labor,  now  join  the  community — eating  the  food  on  the 
ground  on  which  it  is  produced ;  and  thus  is  the  machinery  of 
exchange  improved.  The  quantity  of  flour  consumed  on  the  spot 
inducing  the  miller  to  come  and  eat  his  share,  while  preparing 
that  of  others,  the  labor  of  exchanging  is  again  diminished,  leav 
ing  more  to  be  given  to  the  land.  The  lime  being  now  turned 
up,  tons  of  turnips  are  obtained  from  the  same  surface  that  before 
gave  bushels  of  rye.  The  quantity  to  be  consumed  increasing 
faster  than  the  population,  more  mouths  are  needed  on  the  spot ; 
and  next  the  woollen-mill  comes.  The  wool  no  longer  requiring 
wagons  and  horses,  they  are  now  turned  to  transporting  coal ; 
enabling  the  farmer  to  clear  his  woodland,  and  to  reduce  to  cul 
tivation  the  fine  soil  that  has,  for  centuries,  produced  nothing  but 
timber.  Production  again  increasing,  the  new  wealth  now  takes 
the  form  of  a  cotton-mill ;  and  with  every  step  in  that  direction 
the  farmer  finds  new  demands  on  the  great  machine  he  has  con 
structed,  attended  with  constant  increase  of  power  to  build  it  up 
higher  and  stronger,  and  to  sink  its  foundations  deeper.  He  now 
supplies  beef  and  mutton,  wheat,  butter,  eggs,  poultry,  cheese,  and 


190  CHAPTER   VII.    §  2. 

every  other  of  the  comforts  and  luxuries  of  life,  for  which  the  climate 
is  suited  ;  and  all  of  these  from  the  same  land  which,  when  his  pre 
decessors  commenced  the  work  of  cultivation  on  the  light  soil  of  the 
hills,  had  given  scarcely  the  rye  required  for  the  support  of  life. 

We  have  here  the  establishment  of  a  local  attraction  tending 
to  neutralize  the  attraction  of  the  capital,  or  great  commercial 
city ;  and  where  such  local  centres  most  exist,  there,  invariably, 
is  found  the  greatest  tendency  to  the  development  of  individuality, 
and  the  combination  of  action  —  and  the  most  rapid  progress  in 
knowledge,  wealth,  and  power.  The  more  nearly  the  social  sys 
tem  approximates,  in  its  arrangements,  to  that  we  see  to  have  been 
established  for  the  maintenance  of  order  throughout  the  great  system 
of  which  our  planet  forms  a  part,  the  greater  will  be  the  motion,  and 
the  more  perfect  the  harmony — and  the  more  will  man  be  enabled 
to  control  and  direct  the  various  forces  provided  for  his  use  ;  and 
the  more  rapidly  will  he  pass  from  being  a  creature  of  necessity 
towards  attaining  his  true  position,  that  of  a  being  of  power. 

With  every  step  in  this  direction,  there  is,  as  has  been  shown, 
a  decline  in  the  value  of  all  existing  accumulations ;  because,  on 
the  one  side,  of  the  steady  diminution  in  the  resistance  offered  by 
nature  to  the  gratification  of  man's  desires ;  and,  on  the  other,  of 
the  steady  increase  in  the  power  of  man  to  overcome  the  resist 
ance  which  yet  remains.  That  this  must  necessarily  be  the  case, 
will  be  obvious  to  all  who  reflect  that  if  coal,  iron,  cloth,  or  any 
other  commodity,  could  be  supplied  as  freely  as  is  now  the  atmo 
spheric  air,  the  former  could  have  no  more  value  in  our  eyes  than  we 
are  now  accustomed  to  attach  to  the  latter.  Existing  accumula 
tions  are  the  result  of  past  labors.  Whatever  tends  to  increase 
the  power  of  the  present  man,  tends  to  give  him  increased  con 
trol  over  the  accumulations  of  the  past,  and  to  diminish  the  pro 
portion  of  the  product  of  labor  that  can  be  demanded  by  the 
owner  of  the  latter  for  their  use.  All,  therefore,  who  desire  to 
diminish  the  control  of  capital  over  labor,  and  thus  increase  the 
freedom  of  man,  should  desire  to  promote  the  growth  of  wealth. 

Wealth  grows  with  the  growth  of  the  power  of  association  and 
the  development  of  individuality.  Individuality  is  developed 
as  employments  become  diversified ;  and  hence  it  is  that  man  has 
always  become  more  free  as  the  farmer  and  the  artisan  have 
tended  more  to  take  their  places  by  each  other's  side. 


OP   WEALTH.  191 

3.  We  are  accustomed  to  measure  the  wealth  of  individuals, 
or  of  communities,  by  the  value  of  the  property  they  hold ;  whereas 
wealth  grows,  as  we  see,  with  the  decline  of  values,  which  are  only 
a  measure  of  the  resistance  to  be  overcome  before  similar  property, 
or  commodities,  can  be  reproduced.  This  view  might,  therefore, 
seem  to  be  in  opposition  to  the  general  idea  of  wealth,  but,  when 
examined,  the  difference  will  be  seen  to  be  only  apparent.  The 
positive  wealth  of  an  individual  is  to  be  measured  by  the  power 
he  exercises  ;  but  his  relative  wealth,  by  the  amount  of  effort  that 
would  be  required  to  be  given  by  others  before  they  could  acquire 
similar  power.  A  man,  owning  a  house  that  affords  him  shelter, 
and  a  farm  giving  him  food  and  clothing,  has  positive  wealth, 
although  neither  of  them  has  any  value  in  the  estimation  of  other 
parties.  If  asked  to  fix  a  price  at  which  he  would  part  with 
them,  he  would  estimate  the  amount  of  effort  that  would  be 
required  of  others  before  they  could  acquire  similar  power  —  and 
that  would  be  the  measure  of  his  wealth  as  compared  with  another 
who  had  neither  house  nor  farm.  His  positive  wealth  consists  in 
the  extent  of  his  power  over  nature.  His  relative  wealth  is  the 
measure  of  his  power,  as  compared  with  that  exercised  by  his  fel 
low-men. 

At  this  moment,  however,  an  improvement  takes  place  in  the 
mode  of  making  bricks  and  clearing  lands,  and  forthwith  there  is 
a  diminution  of  his  comparative,  but  without  alteration  in  his 
positive  wealth — the  house  still  continuing  to  shelter  him,  and  the 
farm  to  feed  him,  as  before.  The  decline  in  the  former  is  a  con 
sequence  of  increase  in  the  wealth  and  power  of  the  whole  com 
munity  of  which  he  is  a  member  —  and  that  decline  becomes  more 
rapid  as  improvements  multiply ;  because  with  each  successive  one, 
there  is  a  diminution  in  the  obstacles  offered  by  nature  to  the  pro 
duction  of  houses  and  farms,  and  an  increase  in  the  number  pro 
duced,  with  steady  improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  commu 
nity.  The  positive  wealth  of  the  individual  remains  unchanged, 
and  yet  his  relative  wealth  is  steadily  diminishing ;  and  this  is 
equally  true,  whether  considered  with  reference  to  intellectual  or 
material  accumulations.  The  man  who  can  read,  has  wealth ;  and 
the  more  ignorant  those  around  him,  the  greater  is  its  value. 
Place  him  among  others  who  can  both  read  and  write,  and  he  be- 


192  CHAPTER  VII.    §  4. 

comes  poorer  than  before,  by  comparison,  although  his  positive 
wealth  remains  undiminished. 

The  wealth  of  a  community  is  in  the  ratio  of  its  power  to  com 
mand  the  services  of  nature  ;  and  the  greater  that  power,  the  less 
will  be  the  value  of  commodities,  and  the  greater  the  quantity 
that  may  be  obtained  in  return  for  any  given  amount  of  labor. 
With  every  step  in  this  direction,  there  will  be  a  diminution  in 
the  proportion  borne  by  the  time  required  for  producing  the  neces 
saries  of  life,  to  that  which  may  be  given  to  the  preparation  of  ma 
chinery  required  for  obtaining  further  control  over  nature  ;  or  to 
the  purposes  of  education,  recreation,  or  enjoyment.  The  pro 
gress  of  man  is,  therefore,  in  the  ratio  of  the  decline  in  the  value 
of  commodities,  and  of  the  increase  in  his  own. 

§  4.  The  tendency  of  modern  political  economy  having  been 
towards  excluding  from  consideration  all  phenomena  not  directly 
connected  with  the  production  and  consumption  of  material 
wealth,  there  had  arisen  a  necessity  for  giving  to  the  new  science 
a  title  that  should  be  more  in  harmony  with  this  limitation  in  its 
field  of  action  ;  and  hence  it  is,  that  we  have  had  various  propo 
sitions  looking  to  the  adoption  of  Chrematistics,  Catallactics,  or 
other  words  which  should  expressly  exclude  the  idea  that  the  mind 
and  morals  of  man  were  within  the  range  of  the  economist. 
These  names  have  never,  it  is  true,  been  adopted ;  but  the  mere 
suggestion  of  them  by  distinguished  economists,  is  evidence  of  the 
thoroughly  material  character  of  the  system  ;  and  that  such  is  its 
character  has  recently  been  shown,  in  a  paper  of  great  ability,  by 
one  of  the  most  distinguished  French  economists,  who  tells  his 
readers  that  — 

"  The  greater  part  of  the  books  on  political  economy,  even  to 
the  last  and  best  among  them,  have  been  written  under  the  im 
pression  that  there  was  no  real  wealth,  nor  were  there  any  values 
susceptible  of  being  regarded  as  wealth,  but  those  which  took  a 
material  form.  Smith,"  as  he  continues,  "sees  no  wealth  except 
that  which  consists  of  material  things.*  Say  commences  by 

*  Adam  Smith  was  less  liable  to  this  charge  than  any  other  of  the  writers 
here  referred  to.  No  one  can  read  his  book  without  being  satisfied  that  he 
throughout  looked  to  moral  and  intellectual  improvement  as  being  within  the 
sphere  of  political  economy.  That  such  was  the  case  is  clearly  shown  by  the 
extract  given  in  a  note  on  one  of  the  next  succeeding  pages. 


OF    WEALTH.  193 

classing  under  the  head  of  wealth  lands,  metals,  corn  and  other 
grain,  clothing,  &c.,  without  adding  to  this  enumeration  any 
description  of  values  not  realized  in  a  material  form.  Whenever, 
according  to  Malthus,  the  question  of  wealth  arises,  our  attention 
is  called  almost  exclusively  to  material  objects.  The  only  labors, 
according  to  Rossi,  with  which  the  science  of  wealth  has  to  do, 
are  those  which  contend  with  matter  for  the  purposes  of  adapting 
it  to  the  supply  of  our  wants.  Sismondi  does  not  recognise  as 
wealth  those  products  to  which  industry  has  not  given  a  material 
form.  Wealth,  according  to  M.  Droz,  consists  of  all  those  mate 
rial  things  which  serve  to  satisfy  our  wants.  The  true  idea,  adds 
he,  is  that  we  must- find  it  in  those  material  things  that  are  useful  to 
man.  Finally,"  says  M.  Dunoyer,  "  the  author  of  these  pages  can 
not  forget,  that  he  has  but  recently  had  to  maintain  a  long  discus 
sion  with  several  economists,  his  colleagues  of  the  Academy  of 
Moral  Sciences,  without  having  succeeded  in  persuading  them 
that  there  existed  any  other  wealth  than  that  to  which  they  have 
so  improperly  applied  the  term  material."* 

Modern  political  economy,  having  made  for  itself  a  being  which 
it  denominated  man,  and  from  the  composition  of  which  it  excluded 
all  those  parts  of  the  ordinary  man  that  were  common  to  him  and 
the  angel  —  retaining  carefully  all  those  common  to  him  and  the 
beast  of  the  forest — found  itself  forced,  necessarily,  to  the  exclusion 
from  its  definition  of  wealth,  of  every  thing  pertaining  to  the  feel 
ings,  affections,  or  intellect.  In  its  view,  man  is  an  animal  that  will 
procreate,  and  can  be  made  to  work,  but,  in  order  that  it  may  do 
so,  it  must  be  fed ;  and  it  is  as  a  necessary  consequence  of  this, 
that  not  only  those  named  above,  but  numerous  other  distinguished 
economists,  have  found  themselves  driven  to  the  necessity  of  treat 
ing  as  unproductive,  all  employments  of  time  or  mind  that  do  not 
take  a  material  form.  Magistrates  and  men  of  letters,  teachers, 
men  of  science,  artists,  and  others  —  the  Humboldts  and  the 
Thierry s,  the  Savignys  and  the  Kents,  the  Aragos  and  the  Davys, 
the  Canovas  and  the  Davids — are  regarded  by  this  school  as  un 
productive,  except  so  far  as  they  produce  things ;  and  this  leads, 
says,  most  justly,  M.  Dunoyer,  to  the  inconsistency  that — 

"  In  the  midst  of  this  concert  for  declaring  unproductive  those 
pursuits  which  act  directly  upon  mankind,  these  economists  are 
*  Journal  des  Ecojiomistes,  February,  1853. 


194  CHAPTER  VII.    §  5. 

unanimous  in  finding  them  productive  when  considered  in  their 
consequences  —  that  is  to  say,  in  the  utilities,  the  faculties,  the 
values,  which  they  succeed  in  producing  in  men.  It  is  thus  that 
Adam  Smith,  after  having  said  in  certain  parts  of  his  work  that 
men  of  letters,  men  of  science,  and  other  laborers  of  the  same 
description,  are  workmen  whose  labors  produce  nothing ;  says  else 
where,  expressly,  that  the  useful  knowledge  acquired  by  the  mem 
bers  of  a  society  (knowledge  that  they  could  not  have  acquired  ex 
cept  by  aid  of  these  unproductive  laborers)  is  a  product  fixed  and 
realized,  so  to  say,  in  the  persons  who  possess  it,  and  forms  an  essen 
tial  part  of  the  wealth  of  the  society,  a  part  of  its  fixed  capital.  It 
is  thus  that  J.  B.  Say,  who  says  of  the  same  class  of  laborers  that 
their  products  are  not  susceptible  of  being  accumulated,  and  that 
they  add  nothing  to  the  social  wealth,  formally  declares,  on  an 
other  occasion,  that  the  learning  of  the  public  functionary  y  the  skill 
of  the  workman,  (evidently  creations  of  the  very  men  whose  pro 
ducts  are  not  susceptible  of  being  preserved,)  form  an  accumu 
lated  capital.  It  is  thus  that  M.  Sismondi,  who  at  one  moment 
describes,  as  unproductive,  the  labors  of  teachers  and  others  —  at 
another  declares,  as  positively,  that  men  of  letters  and  artists  (in- 
contestably  the  work  of  those  teachers)  constitute  a  part  of  the 
national  wealth.  It  is  thus  that  M.  Droz,  who  says,  on  one  occa 
sion,  that  it  would  be  absurd  to  consider  virtue  as  properly  included 
under  the  term  wealth,  closes  his  book  by  saying  that  it  would  be 
to  commit  a  great  error  if  we  should  regard  as  a  non-producer 
the  magistracy  which  secures  the  triumph  of  justice,  the  learned  man 
who  diffuses  knowledge,  &c."* 

§  5.  By  the  definition  of  wealth  above  given,  such  inconsist 
encies  are  avoided,  and  the  word  is  brought  back  to  its  original 
signification  of  general  happiness,  prosperity,  and  power  —  not 
the  power  of  man  over  his  fellow-man,  but  over  himself,  his  facul 
ties,  and  the  numerous  and  wonderful  forces  provided  for  his  use. 
Such,  to  no  inconsiderable  extent,  was  the  idea  of  Adam  Smith, 
as  will  be  seen  in  the  passage  given  below  —  in  which  he  shows 
how  greatly  happiness,  wealth,  and  progress,  would  be  promoted 
by  the  adoption  of  a  policy  in  accordance  with  those  "  natural 
inclinations  of  man"  which  lead  him  to  combine  with  his  fellow- 
*  Ibid.  p.  166. 


OF    WEALTH.  195 

men  for  the  development  of  the  various  faculties  of  all  the  mem 
bers  of  society  —  facilitating  the  extension  of  commerce,  and 
emancipating  him  from  the  exactions  of  the  trader  and  the 
soldier. * 

Dr.  Smith  was  no  advocate  of  centralization.  On  the  contrary, 
he  fully  believed  in  a  policy  tending  to. the  creation  of  local  cen- 

*  "That  order  of  things  which  necessity  imposes,  in  general,  though  not 
in  every  particular  country,  is  in  every  particular  country  promoted  by  the 
natural  inclinations  of  man.  If  human  institutions  had  never  thwarted  those 
natural  inclinations,  the  towns  could  nowhere  have  increased  beyond  what 
the  improvement  and  cultivation  of  the  territory  in  which  they  were  situated 
could  support;  till  such  time,  at  least,^as  the  whole  of  that  territory  was 
completely  cultivated  and  improved.  Upon  equal,  or  nearly  equal,  profits 
most  men  will  choose  to  employ  their  capitals  —  rather  in  the  improvement 
and  cultivation  of  land,  than  either  in  manufactures  or  in  foreign  trade.  The 
man  who  employs  his  capital  in  land  has  it  more  under  his  view  and  com 
mand,  and  his  fortune  is  much  less  liable  to  accidents,  than  that  of  the  trader, 
who  is  obliged  frequently  to  commit  it,  not  only  to  the  winds  and  the  waves, 
but  to  the  more  uncertain  elements  of  human  folly  and  injustice,  by  giving 
great  credits,  in  distant  countries,  to  men  with  whose  character  and  situa 
tion  he  can  seldom  be  thoroughly  acquainted.  The  capital  of  the  landlord, 
on  the  contrary,  which  is  fixed  in  the  improvement  of  his  land,  seems  to  be 
as  well  secured  as  the  nature  of  human  affairs  can  admit  of.  The  beauty  of 
the  country,  besides  the  pleasures  of  a  country  life,  the  tranquillity  of  mind  which 
it  promises,  and,  wherever  the  injustice  of  human  laws  does  not  disturb  it,  the 
independency  which  it  really  affords,  have  charms  that,  more  or  less,  attract 
everybody ;  and  as  to  cultivate  the  ground  was  the  original  destination  of 
man,  so,  in  every  stage  of  his  existence,  he  seems  to  retain  a  predilection  for 
this  primitive  employment. 

"Without  the  assistance  of  some  artificers,  indeed,  the  cultivation  of  land 
cannot  be  carried  on  but  with  great  inconveniency  and  continual  interrup 
tion.  Smiths,  carpenters,  wheelwrights  and  ploughwrights,  masons  and  brick 
layers,  tanners,  shoemakers,  and  tailors,  are  people  whose  service  the  farmer 
has  frequent  occasion  for.  Such  artificers,  too,  stand  occasionally  in  need 
of  the  assistance  of  one  another ;  and  as  their  residence  is  not,  like  that  of 
the  farmer,  necessarily  tied  down  to  a  precise  spot,  they  naturally  settle  in 
the  neighborhood  of  one  another,  and  thus  form  a  small  town  or  village. 
The  butcher,  the  brewer,  and  the  baker  soon  join  them,  together  with  many 
other  artificers  and  retailers,  necessary  or  useful  for  supplying  their  occa 
sional  wants,  and  who  contribute  still  further  to  augment  the  town.  The 
inhabitants  of  the  town,  and  those  of  the  country  are  mutually  the  servants 
of  one  another.  The  town  is  a  continual  fair  or  market,  to  which  the  inha 
bitants  of  the  country  resort  in  order  to  exchange  their  rude  for  manufac 
tured  produce.  It  is  this  commerce  which  supplies  the  inhabitants  of  the 
town  both  with  the  materials  of  their  work  and  the  means  of  their  subsist 
ence.  The  quantity  of  the  finished  work  which  they  sell  to  the  inhabitants 
of  the  country  necessarily  regulates  the  quantity  of  the  materials  and  pro 
visions  which  they  buy.  Neither  their  employment  nor  subsistence,  there 
fore,  can  augment,  but  in  proportion  to  the  augmentation  of  the  demand 
from  the  country  for  finished  work ;  and  this  demand  can  augment  only  in 
proportion  to  the  extension  of  improvement  and  cultivation.  Had  human 
institutions,  therefore,  never  disturbed  the  natural  course  of  things,  the  pro 
gressive  wealth  and  increase  of  the  towns  would,  in  every  political  society,  be 
consequential  and  in  proportion  to  the  improvement  and  cultivation  of  the 
territory  or  country." —  Wealth  of  Nations,  book  3,  chap.  i. 


196  CHAPTER    VII.    §  5. 

tres  of  action  ;  and  he  did  not  believe  in  that  one  which  looked 
to  prevent  association,  by  compelling  all  the  farmers  of  the  world 
to  resort  to  a  single  and  distant  market  when  they  desired  to  con 
vert  their  food  and  wool  into  cloth.  Such,  however,  was  the 
policy  of  his  country ;  and  therefore  did  it  become  necessary 
for  Mr.  Malthus  to  prove  that  the  pauperism  which  was  the 
necessary  consequence  of  centralization,  had  its  origin  in  a  great 
natural  law,  which  forbade  that  the  quantity  of  food  should  keep 
pace  with  the  demands  of  an  increasing  population.  Next  came 
Mr.  Ricardo,  to  whom  the  world  is  indebted  for  the  idea  that 
cultivation  had  always  commenced  on  the  rich  soils  of  the  earth 
—  and  that  the  men  who  were  then  flying  from  England  to  the 
colonies,  were  going  from  the  cultivation  of  poor  soils  to  that  of 
rich  ones  ;  when  directly  the  reverse  had  ever  been  the  case.  His 
doctrine,  and  that  of  all  his  followers,  is  therefore  that  of  disper 
sion,  centralization,  and  large  cities  ;  whereas  that  of  Dr.  Smith 
looked  to  association,  to  local  self-government,  and  to  countries 
abounding  in  villages  and  towns,  in  which  should  be  performed 
the  exchanges  of  the  surrounding  country. 

The  whole  tendency  of  modern  political  economists  has  been  in  a 
direction  opposite  to  that  indicated  as  the  true  one,  by  the  author 
of  the  Wealth  of  Nations ;  and  therefore  it  has  been,  that  their 
science  has  become  limited  to  the  single  consideration,  how  it  is 
that  material  wealth  may  be  increased — leaving  altogether  out  of 
view  the  consideration  of  the  morality,  or  the  happiness,  of  the 
communities  they  desired  to  teach.  Hence  it  is  that  it  has  gra 
dually  taken  so  repulsive  a  form,  and  that  one  among  its  most 
eminent  teachers  has  found  himself  called  upon  to  say  to  his 
readers,  that  the  political  economist  is  required  to  look  to  the 
growth  of  wealth  alone,  and  to  limit  himself  to  the  discussion  of 
the  measures  by  help  of  which  he  thinks  it  may  be  promoted  — 
allowing  "neither  sympathy  with  indigence,  nor  disgust  at  profu 
sion  or  at  avarice — neither  reverence  for  existing  institutions,  nor 
detestation  of  existing  abuses — neither  love  of  popularity,  nor  of 
paradox,  nor  of  system,  to  deter  him  from  stating  what  he 
believes  to  be  the  facts,  or  from  drawing  from  those  facts  what 
appear  to  him  to  be  the  legitimate  conclusions.  "* 

Happily,  true  science  is  required  to  make  no  such  calls  upon 
*  Senior:  Outlines  of  Political  Economy,  p.  130. 


OF   WEALTH.  197 

its  teachers.  The  more  it  is  studied,  the  more  must  the  "indi 
gence"  they  see  around  them  excite  their  "sympathy,"  and  the 
more  free  must  they  become  in  its  expression  —  because  the  more 
fully  must  they  become  satisfied  that  the  existence  of  such  a  state 
of  things  is  a  consequence  of  human,  and  not  of  divine,  laws  ;  the 
greater  must  be  the  "  disgust "  excited  by  both  "profusion  and 
avarice,"  as  tending  to  the  production  of  "indigence";  the 
greater  must  be  their  ' '  reverence"  for  all  institutions  tending  to 
promote  the  growth  of  that  habit  of  association  by  help  of  which, 
alone,  man  acquires  the  power  over  nature  in  which  consists 
his  wealth;  the  greater  the  "detestation  of  existing  abuses" 
tending  to  perpetuate  the  existing  poverty  and  wretchedness ; 
and  the  stronger  their  determination  honestly  to  labor  for  their 
extirpation. 

Wealth  grows  with  the  growth  of  the  power  of  man  to  satisfy 
that  first  and  greatest  want  of  his  nature  —  the  desire  for  associa 
tion  with  his  fellow-men.  The  more  rapid  its  growth,  the  greater 
is  the  tendency  towards  the  disappearance  of  "indigence,"  on  the 
one  hand,  and  "profusion  and  avarice,"  on  the  other  —  towards 
the  termination  of  existing  "  abuses,"  tending  to  limit  the  exer 
cise  of  the  power  of  association,  to  restrain  the  development  of 
individuality,  and  to  impair  the  feeling  of  strict  responsibility 
towards  God  and  man  —  and  towards  having  society  assume  that 
form  which  is  most  calculated  for  facilitating  the  progress  of  the 
latter  towards  the  high  position  for  which  he  was  originally  in 
tended  ;  and  therefore  the  form  most  calculated  to  inspire  respect 
and  "reverence." 


198  CHAPTER  VIII. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

OP   THE   FORMATION   OF   SOCIETY. 

§  1.  CRUSOE  was  obliged  to  work  alone.  In  time,  however, 
being  joined  by  Friday,  society  commenced ;  but  in  what  did  this 
society  consist  ?  In  the  existence  of  another  person  on  his  island  ? 
Certainly  not.  Had  Friday  come  so  near  as  to  be  enabled  to  see 
him  every  day,  but  had  refrained  from  talking  with  him,  or  ex 
changing  services  with  him — hunting  and  fishing  alone,  and  con 
suming  alone  the  produce  of  his  labors  —  there  would  still  have 
been  no  society.  This  he  did  not  do,  but,  on  the  contrary,  talked 
with  him,  exchanged  services  with  him,  cooked  the  fish  when  Cru 
soe  had  caught  it,  and  in  a  thousand  ways  combined  his  efforts 
with  those  of  his  fellow-prisoner  on  the  island — and  thus  produced 
society,  or,  in  other  words,  association ;  which  is  but  the  act  of 
exchanging  ideas  and  services,  and  is  properly  expressed  by  the 
single  word  commerce.  Every  act  of  association  being  an  act  of 
commerce,  the  terms  society  and  commerce  are  but  different  modes 
of  expressing  the  same  idea. 

That  commerce  may  exist  there  must  be  difference,  whether  in 
the  organic  or  inorganic  world.  Had  Crusoe  and  Friday  been 
limited  to  the  exercise  of  any  one,  and  the  same,  faculty,  there 
could  have  been  no  more  association  between  them  than  there 
could  now  be  between  two  particles  of  oxygen,  or  of  hydro 
gen.  Bring  those  two  elements  together,  and  combination 
will,  at  once,  take  place ;  and  so  is  it  with  man.  Had  Crusoe 
had  the  use  of  his  eyes  alone,  and  Friday  been  possessed  of  hands, 
while  deprived  of  sight,  combination  between  them  would  imme 
diately  have  taken  place.  Society  consists  in  combinations  result 
ing  from  the  existence  of  differences — of  various  individualities 
among  the  persons  of  whom  it  is  composed ;  and  the  more  perfect 
the  proportion  borne  by  the  various  elements,  each  to  the  other, 
the  greater  must  be  the  tendency  to  combination,  as  has  been 


OF   THE   FORMATION   OF   SOCIETY.  199 

already  shown.  Among  purely  agricultural  communities  associa 
tion  scarcely  exists ;  whereas,  it  is  found  in  a  high  degree  where  the 
farmer,  the  lawyer,  the  merchant,  the  carpenter,  the  blacksmith, 
the  mason,  the  miller,  the  spinner,  the  weaver,  the  builder,  the 
smelter  of  ore,  the  refiner  of  iron,  and  the  maker  of  engines,  are 
seen  constituting  portions  of  the  community. 
-  So  is  it  in  the  inorganic  world — the  power  of  combination  grow 
ing  with  the  increase  of  differences,  but  always  in  harmony  with 
the  law  of  definite  proportions,  to  which  chemistry  is  indebted  for 
a  precision  that  without  it  could  never  have  been  attained.  Place 
a  thousand  atoms  of  oxygen  in  a  receiver,  and  they  will  remain 
motionless ;  but  introduce  a  single  atom  of  carbon,  and  excite 
their  affinities  for  each  other,  and  at  once  motion  will  be  pro 
duced — a  certain  portion  of  the  former  combining  with  the  latter, 
and  producing  carbonic  acid.  The  remainder  of  the  oxygen  will 
continue  motionless.  If,  however,  successive  atoms  of  hydrogen, 
nitrogen,  and  carbon  be  introduced,  new  combinations  will  be 
formed,  until  at  length  motion  will  have  been  produced  through 
out  the  whole  ;  but  in  each  successive  case  of  combination  the  pro 
portions  will  be  as  definitely  fixed  as  they  had  been  in  the  first ; 
and  so  is  it  throughout  the  inorganic  world. 

Such  being  the  case  in  regard  to  all  other  matter,*  it  must  be 
so  in  regard  to  those  combinations  in  which  man  is  concerned, 
indicated  by  the  term  Society  —  the  tendency  to  motion  being 
in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  harmony  of  the  proportions  of  the  seve 
ral  parts  of  which  it  is  composed.  So,  in  fact,  it  is  —  associa 
tion  increasing  with  the  increase  of  differences,  and  diminishing 
with  any  diminution  therein,  until  motion  at  length  ceases  to  ex 
ist  ;  as  has  been  the  case  in  all  those  countries  that  have  declined 
in  wealth  and  population. 

Combination  in  the  inorganic  world  takes  place  in  accordance 
with  fixed  and  immutable  laws.  There,  however,  the  bodies  that 
combine  have  always,  and  in  all  places,  the  same  power  of  combi- 

*  Speaking  of  the  law  of  definite  proportions,  M.  Comte  says : — "  The  fail 
ure  of  the  theory  with  regard  to  organic  bodies,  indicates  that  the  cause  of 
this  immense  exception  cannot  be  investigated ;  and  such  an  inquiry  belongs 
as  much  to  physiology  as  to  chemistry." — Positive  Philosophy,  vol.  i.  p.  14. 
Knowing,  as  we  do,  how  recent  are  both  these  sciences,  it  is  no  matter  of 
surprise  that  a  part  of  their  relations  to  each  other  remains  yet  to  be  disco 
vered. 


200  CHAPTER   VIII.    §2. 

nation  —  the  atom  of  oxygen  of  the  days  of  the  Pharaohs  having 
been  precisely  the  same  in  composition  as  that  of  those  of  Lavoi 
sier  and  Davy.  With  man  the  case  is  different.  Capable  of 
progress,  his  faculties  become  developed,  each  in  succession,  as 
his  mind  is  stimulated  into  action  by  the  habit  of  association 
with  his  fellow-man.  With  him,  therefore,  the  power  of  combi 
nation  is  a  growing  one,  and  should  increase  from  day  to  day, 
and  from  year  to  year,  as  differences  increase  in  number ;  and 
as  society  more  and  more  obtains  those  proportions  which  are  re 
quired —  as  in  the  case  of  the  oxygen  and  the  carbon — for  taking 
up  each  faculty  of  the  individual  men  of  whom  it  is  composed ; 
and  this  we  shall  see  to  be  the  case. 

§  2.  In  the  inorganic  world  every  act  of  combination  is  an  act 
of  motion,  the  various  particles  exchanging  with  each  other  their 
respective  properties.  So  is  it  in  the  social  one — every  act  of  asso 
ciation  being  an  act  of  motion ;  ideas  being  given  out  and  taken  in ; 
services  being  rendered  and  accepted,  and  commodities  or  things 
being  exchanged.  All  force  results  from  motion,  and  it  is  where 
there  is  the  greatest  movement  in  society,  that  man  is  seen  exert 
ing  the  greatest  power  for  the  subjugation  of  the  various  natural 
forces  by  which  he  is  every  where  surrounded.  What  then  are 
the  laws  of  motion  ?  If  it  is  true,  that  there  is  but  one  system  of 
laws  for  the  government  of  all  matter,  then  those  which  govern 
the  movements  of  the  various  inorganic  bodies  should  be  the  same 
with  those  by  which  is  regulated  the  motion  of  society  ;  and  that 
such  is  the  case  can  readily  be  shown. 

A  body  moved  by  a  single  force  proceeds  always  in  the  same 
direction  until  stopped  by  some  counteracting  one.  The  latter, 
as  we  know,  is  found  in  gravitation,  and  so  long  as  the  force 
exercised  by  man  is  so  counteracted,  all  his  motions  must  be 
liable  to  constant  intermission,  as  we  see  them  everywhere  to 
have  been.  In  the  early  period  of  society  he  obtains  power  to 
grind  his  grain  by  means  of  raising  and  then  dropping  a  stone  — 
or  he  moves  through  the  water  by  help  of  an  oar — or  he  knocks 
an  animal  in  the  head  by  means  of  a  club — all  of  these  operations 
being  the  result  of  the  application  of  a  single  force ;  and  all  of 
them  consequently  intermitted  motions — requiring  a  constant  re 
petition  of  the  same  force  that  had  been  required  in  the  first  pas- 


OF   THE   FORMATION   OF   SOCIETY.  201 

sage  from  a  state  of  rest  to  one  of  motion.     There  is  thus  a  con 
stant  waste  of  power,  and  the  motion  produced  is  small. 

That  such  is  the  case  he  feels,  and  therefore  is  it  that  we  see 
him  constantly  endeavoring  to  obtain  continuous  motion — andj 
this  he  does,  by  imitating  as  far  as  possible  the  mechanism  he  sees 
to  govern  the  movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  Desiring  to 
move  a  body,  and  its  form  permitting  him  so  to  do,  he  causes  it 
to  revolve  on  its  own  axis,  and  thus  brings  gravitation  to  aid  him 
in  his  efforts,  where  before  it  had  resisted  him  —  as  when  he  rolls 
a  ball,  a  hogshead,  or  a  bale  of  cotton.  There  being,  however, 
numerous  bodies  whose  forms  forbid  that  they  should  be  rolled,  he 
is  next  seen  constructing  an  instrument  that  will  revolve  upon  its 
own  axis,  as  does  the  earth ;  and  between  two  such  machines  he 
places  the  bodies  he  desires  to  move — thus  obtaining  far  more  con 
tinuous  action.  Finding  himself  yet,  however,  greatly  limited  by 
friction,  he  lays  down  an  iron  rail,  and  is  thus  enabled  to  obtain 
continuous  action  with  high  velocity ;  and  the  momentum  in 
creases  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  velocity  —  a  body  falling  at  the 
rate  of  a  thousand  feet  in  a  minute,  giving  a  force  precisely  ten 
times  greater  than  would  be  given  by  it  if  falling  at  the  rate  of 
a  hundred  feet  in  the  same  space  of  time. 

Examining  now  the  progress  of  man  towards  obtaining  power  * 
over  nature,  we  find  it  to  be  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  substitution 
of  continued  for  intermitted  motion.  From  the  sharpened  shell 
used  by  Robinson  Crusoe,  he  passes,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the 
knife,  the  saw,  the  cross-cut  saw,  and  finally  to  the  circular  one, 
that  can  be  driven  at  the  highest  velocity ;  and,  this  done,  he  ob 
tains  from  the  application  of  the  same  amount  of  muscular  power 
results  thousands  of  times  greater  than  at  first. 

In  the  process  of  drainage,  the  farmer  is  only  seeking  to  es 
tablish  continuity  of  motion.  Knowing  that  when  water  is  stag 
nant,  it  is  destructive  of  vegetable  life  —  and  seeing  himself  sur 
rounded  by  great  bodies  of  the  richest  land,  waiting  only  for  the 
production  of  motion  in  the  water  with  which  it  has  been  satu 
rated — he  digs  canals  and  lays  pipes,  and  cuts  away  the  trees  to 
admit  the  sun ;  and  having  thus  enabled  motion  to  take  place,  he 
obtains  crops  thrice  increased  in  quantity. 

Again,  he  substitutes  the  circular  motion  of  the  reaping-hook 
for  the  more  angular  one  of  the  hand  —  thence  passing  to  the 

YOL.  I.— 14 


202  CHAPTER   VIII.    §  2. 

scythe — and  finally,  to  the  constant  motion  of  the  reaping  machine, 
by  help  of  which  he  cuts  more  grain  in  an  hour,  than  with  his 
hands  he  could  pull  up  in  a  week.  The  printer  in  like  manner 
passes  from  the  wooden  block  and  hammer,  to  the  more  conti 
nuous  action  of  the  screw ;  and  thence,  by  various  stages,  through 
the  reciprocating  motion  of  the  hand-press,  to  the  wonderful  in 
strument  now  in  use,  by  help  of  which  we  obtain  in  a  single  day,  a 
greater  return  than  was  obtained  by  Caxton  in  a  year.  The  ma 
nufacturer,  in  his  turn,  so  arranges  his  mill,  that  his  wool  and  his 
cotton  enter  at  one  door,  and  go  out  at  an  opposite  one,  becom 
ing  at  each  remove,  more  and  more  changed  in  form,  until  the  raw 
material'  that  entered  at  the  one,  goes  out  at  the  other,  ready  for 

/  use.  In  every  pursuit  of  life,  man  thus  seeks  to  obtain  continuous 
motion;  and  his  progress  toward  wealth  and  power  is  every 
where  seen  to  be  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  accomplishment  of  that 

^object. 

Looking  throughout  the  world,  we  find  nature  every  where 
applying  force  by  aid  of  continued  motion.  To  develop  electri 
city,  a  circuit  must  be  formed,  and  this  circuit  is  what  we  find 
around  us  everywhere,  whether  studying  the  motion  of  the  winds, 
the  formation  of  the  dew,  the  circulation  of  the  blood  through  the 
arteries  which  carry  it  from  the  heart,  or  through  the  veins  by 
which  it  is  returned  to  the  place  whence  it  came.  The  more 
rapid  the  motion,  too,  the  more  is  it  continuous,  and  the  greater 
is  the  force  exerted.  The  Rhine,  taking  its  rise  among  the  snowy 
peaks  of  the  Alps,  passes  rapidly  towards  the  ocean,  and  as  it 
carries  off  the  water  that  has  been  dissolved,  new  condensations 
are  being  formed  at  a  higher  elevation — thus  furnishing,  for  the  use 
of  man,  a  motion  that  is  constant  during  the  heats  of  summer,  and 
the  colds  of  winter.  The  Ohio  and  the  Mississippi — having  their 
heads  among  the  comparatively  slight  elevations  bordering,  on  the 
east  and  north,  the  great  valley  of  the  west — have  a  fnore  sluggish 
motion ;  and,  as  a  consequence,  those  streams  are  almost  useless 
for  nearly  half  the  year.  Look  where  we  may,  throughout  nature, 
we  see  that  power  exists  in  the  ratio  of  the  continuity  of  motion ; 
and  that  similar  continuity  is  what  man  is  everywhere  endeavour 
ing  to  obtain. 

In  the  movements  of  the  isolated  settler,  however,  there  can  be 
no  continuity.  Dependent  for  supplies  upon  his  powers  of  appro- 


OF   THE   FORMATION   OF   SOCIETY.  203 

priatfon,  and  compelled  to  wander  over  extensive  surfaces,  he 
finds  himself  not  unfrequently  in  danger  of  perishing  for  want  of 
food.  Even  when  successful,  he  is  compelled  to  intermit  his 
search,  and  provide  for  effecting  the  change  of  place  required  for 
bringing  his  food,  his  miserable  habitation,  and  himself  together. 
There  arrived,  he  is  forced  to  be,  in  turn,  cook  and  tailor,  mason 
and  carpenter.  Deprived  of  artificial  light,  his  nights  are  wholly 
useless,  while  his  power  productively  to  apply  his  days,  is  depend 
ent  altogether  upon  the  chances  of  the  weather. 

Discovering,  however,  at  length,  that  he  has  a  neighbor,  ex 
changes  arise  between  them  ;  but,  occupying  different  parts  of  the 
island,  they  find  themselves  compelled  to  approach  each  other 
precisely  as  do  the  stones  with  which  they  pound  their  grain ; 
and  when  they  separate,  the  same  force  is  again  required 
to  bring  them  once  more  together.  Further,  when  they  meet, 
difficulties  exist  in  settling  the  terms  of  trade,  by  reason  of  the 
irregularity  in  the  supply  of  the  various  commodities  with  which 
they  desire  to  part.  The  fisherman  has  had  good  luck,  and  has 
taken  many  fish ;  but  chance  has  enabled  the  hunter  to  obtain 
a  supply  of  fish,  and  now  he  wants  only  fruit,  which  the  fisherman 
has  not. — Difference  being,  as  we  already  know,  indispensable 
to  association,  the  want  of  difference  would  here  oppose  a  bar  to 
association  difficult  to  be  surmounted  ;  and  that  difficulty  is  seen 
to  exist  in  every  community  in  which  there  are  found  no  differ 
ences.  The  farmer  has  rarely  occasion  to  exchange  with  his 
brother  farmer  —  the  planter  has  never  need  to  exchange  with  his 
brother  planter,  nor  does  the  shoemaker  require  to  exchange  with 
another  shoemaker ;  and  to  the  absence  of  diversity  of  employ 
ments  it  is  due,  that  in  the  infancy  of  society  there  are  so  many 
obstacles  standing  in  the  way  of  commerce,  as  to  render  the  trader, 
who  aids  in  their  removal,  a  most  important  member  of  the  com 
munity. 

In  time,  however,  wealth  and  population  grow,  and  with  that  ' 
growth  there  is  an  increase  of  motion  in  the  community  —  the 
husband  now  exchanging  services  with  the  wife,  the  parents  with 
the  children,  and  the  children  with  each  other — one  providing  fish, 
a  second  meat,  and  a  third  grain ;  while  a  fourth  converts  the  wool 
into  cloth,  and  a  fifth  the  skins  into  shoes.  Motion  now  becomes 
more  continuous,  and  with  this  increase  of  movement  there  is  a 


204  CHAPTER    VIII.    §2. 

steady  increase  in  the  power  of  man  over  nature,  attended  by  di 
minution  of  her  resistance  to  his  further  efforts.  Everywhere 
around,  are  seen  other  families,  each  revolving  on  its  own  axis, 
while  the  community  of  which  they  form  a  part,  is  steadily  re 
volving  around  a  common  centre ;  and  thus,  by  degrees,  we  see 
established  a  system  corresponding  with  that  which  maintains  in 

Border  the  wonderful  system  of  the  universe.  At  every  step  we 
witness  an  increased  rapidity  of  motion,  with  increase  of  force  on 
the  part  of  man — exhibited  in  the  fact  that,  great  as  are  his  num 
bers,  he  obtains  steadily  increasing  supplies  of  corn  from  a  surface 
that  gave  to  the  original  settler  the  most  scanty  supplies  of  the 
poorest  food. 

With  each  step  gained,  we  find  a  tendency  to  greater  velocity  at 
the  next  one ;   and  as  to  man  has  been  granted  the  capacity  for 

^further  progress,  such  must  necessarily  be  the  case.  To  the  first 
little  community,  the  construction  of  a  simple  footpath  was  a  mat 
ter  requiring  great  exertion ;  but  now,  with  the  growth  of  popula 
tion  and  wealth,  it  is  seen  obtaining  in  succession  turnpike  roads, 
plank  roads,  railroads  and  locomotive  engines  ;  and  with  less 
trouble  than  had  been  at  first  required  to  make  the  path  by  which 
the  products  of  the  chase  had  been  conveyed  on  human  shoul 
ders.  Here  we  have  the  accelerated  motion  that  is  witnessed  in 
a  body  when  falling  towards  the  earth.  In  the  first  second,  it  may 
fall  but  a  single  foot ;  but  at  the  end  of  ten  seconds  it  is  found  to 
have  fallen  100  —  at  the  end  of  the  second  ten,  400  —  of  the  third, 
900  —  fourth,  1600  —  fifth,  2500  —  and  so  on  until  at  the  end  of 
a  thousand  seconds  it  has  fallen  a  million  of  feet.  Had  it  been 
stopped  at  the  end  of  each  foot  and  required  to  take  a  new  depar 
ture,  it  would  have  fallen  through  a  distance  of  but  a  thousand 
feet ;  but  by  reason  of  the  constantly  increasing  momentum  result 
ing  from  continuous  motion,  it  has  fallen  through  a  thousand 
times  that  distance.  Such,  too,  must  be  the  case  with  society. 
In  the  outset,  there  is  little  motion  and  little  power  of  progress ; 
but  as  its  members  are  more  and  more  enabled  to  associate,  the 
power  of  further  advance  is  found  to  grow  with  constantly  in 
creasing  rapidity.  The  improvements  of  the  last  ten  years  have 
been  greater  than  those  of  the  preceding  thirty,  and  they  had  been 
greater  than  those  of  the  century  that  had  preceded  it;  and  in 
that  century  man  had  obtained  more  power  over  nature  than  had 


OF   THE   FORMATION    OF    SOCIETY.  205 

* 

been  acquired  in  the  long  period  that  had  elapsed  since  the  days 
of  Alfred,  or  of  Charlemagne. 

In  order,  however,  that  there  may  be  continuous  motion  in  so 
ciety,  there  must  exist  security  of  person  and  of  property;  but  when 
men  are  poor,  and  widely  scattered,  neither  of  these  can  readily 
be  obtained.  There  existing  then  no  law  but  that  of  force,  the 
strong  man  is  seen  to  have  been  everywhere  disposed  to  trample 
upon,  and  plunder,  those  who  were  weak  —  sometimes  seizing  on 
land,  and  compelling  them  to  work  it  for  his  profit ;  at  others, 
placing  himself  across  the  road,  and  forbidding  all  intercourse 
except  upon  terms  to  be  settled  by  himself ;  again,  by  requiring 
each  laborer  to  pay  rent,  tax,  or  faille;  or,  lastly,  by  dispossessing 
them  of  houses,  farms,  and  implements  —  and,  perhaps,  selling 
husbands  and  wives,  parents  and  children,  into  slavery,  as  further 
addition  to  the  spoils  of  "glorious  war."  In  all  these  cases, 
there  is,  as  the  reader  will  observe,  a  retardation  of  motion,  at  the 
cost  of  those  who  live  by  labor,  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  live  by 
appropriation  of  the  produce  of  the  labor  of  others. 

The  value  of  all  commodities  is  the  measure  of  the  resistance  to 
be  overcome  before  they  can  be  obtained.  As  that  resistance 
diminishes,  there  is  a  decline  in  their  value,  and  an  increase 
in  that  of  man.  Whatever  tends  to  promote  increase  in  the 
motion  of  society,  tends  to  diminish  the  value  of  the  former, 
and  to  increase  that  of  the  latter.  Whatever,  on  the  contrary, 
tends  to  retard  the  movements  of  society,  and  prevent  the  growth 
of  the  power  of  association,  or  commerce,  tends  equally  to  pre 
vent  decline  of  values  ;  to  retard  the  growth  of  wealth  ;  to  arrest 
the  development  of  individuality ;  and  to  diminish  the  value  of 
man.  I 

§  3.  In  the  picture  thus  far  presented  of  the  movements  of 
early  colonists,  they  have  been  represented  as  heads  of  the  only 
two  families  on  an  island,  each  enjoying  perfect  security  of  person 
and  property — both  enabled  to  appropriate  to  their  own  uses  and 
purposes  the  whole  produce  of  their  labor  —  and  both,  therefore, 
enabled  to  pass  steadily  onward  towards  increased  wealth,  pros 
perity,  and  happiness.  Such,  however,  has  not  been  the  course 
of  things  in  any  of  the  countries  of  the  world.  In  all  there  have 
existed  causes  of  disturbance,  tending  greatly  to  arrest  the  pro- 


206  CHAPTER   VIII.    §  3. 

gress  of  man  ;  but  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  the  composition 
of  forces,  it  has  been  deemed  right  to  show  what  would  have  been 
the  course  of  events,  had  no  such  causes  existed.  That  done,  we 
may  now  examine  into  those  disturbances,  with  a  view  to  ascer 
tain  how  each  and  every  of  them  has  tended  to  produce  the  course 
of  action  recorded  in  our  historical  books. 

Let  us,  with  that  view,  add  to  the  number  of  occupants  of  the 
island  a  third,  remarkable  for  his  strength  of  arm  —  able,  if  he 
will,  to  dictate  laws  to  his  fellow-colonists  —  and  willing  to  live 
by  their  labor  instead  of  his  own.  Placing  himself  midway  be 
tween  them,  he  s*ays  to  A,  the  occupant  of  one  side  of  the  island 
and  possessor  of  a  canoe,  ' '  Bring  your  fish  to  me.  It  will  give 
you  less  trouble  than  you  would  find  in  carrying  them  across  the 
island,  and  I  will  arrange  the  terms  of  the  exchange  between  you 
and  B."  To  the  latter,  he  says,  "  Bring  me  your  birds,  rabbits, 
and  squirrels,  and  I  will  negotiate  the  terms  on  which  you  shall 
have  fish." 

To  this  they  might  object,  that  they  were  perfectly  competent 
to  manage  their  own  exchanges,  and  that  they  would  thus  save 
the  expense  of  employing  an  agent ;  and,  were  they  united,  they 
might  oppose  to  the  gratification  of  his  wishes  an  effectual  resist 
ance.  Any  such  effort  at  association  being  likely,  however,  to 
defeat  him  in  his  desire  to  live  at  their  expense,  it  becomes  essen 
tial  that  he  should,  as  far  as  possible,  prevent  any  thing  like  com 
bination  of  action  between  them.  He,  therefore,  stirs  up  strife ; 
and  discord  produces  weakness  and  poverty,  where  association 
would  have  been  productive  of  wealth  and  strength.  The  more 
widely  they  are  held  apart,  the  larger  is  the  proportion  of  the  pro 
duct  of  their  labor  that  he  himself  appropriates  ;  and  thus,  while 
they  become  from  day  to  day  more  dependent  upon  his  will,  he 
increases  steadily  in  wealth  and  power. 

Their  families,  however,  increasing,  it  occurs  to  some  of  the 
more  intelligent  among  them  that  their  situation  might  be  im 
proved  by  the  adoption  of  measures  tending  to  enable  them  to 
combine  their  efforts  and  work  together.  Although  A  has  only 
a  bow  and  arrows,  there  exists  no  reason  why  his  son  might  not 
have  a  canoe ;  and  the  ocean  around  him  abounds  in  fish. 
Although  B  has  only  a  canoe,  it  would  be  easy  for  his  son  to 
obtain  a  bow  and  arrows  ;  and,  thenceforth,  father  and  son  could 


OP   THE   FORMATION  OF   SOCIETY.  207 

exchange  fish  for  meat,  without  the  necessity  for  crossing  the 
island,  at  great  cost  for  transportation,  and  subject  to  the  de 
mands  of  the  trader  who  has  thus  placed  himself  across  the  road. 
Such  an  increase  in  the  power  of  association,  and  in  the  continu 
ity  of  motion,  does  not,  however,  suit  the  purposes  of  the  latter, 
to  whom  traffic  affords  the  means  of  living  in  luxury  at  the  cost 
of  his  poor  dependants ;  nor  will  he  permit  it  to  be  done.  Being 
rich,  he  can  afford  to  pay  for  the  help  required  for  maintaining 
his  authority ;  and  among  the  children  of  his  neighbors  there 
are  some  who  would  prefer  to  live  by  the  labor  of  others  rather 
than  by  their  own.  Poor  and  dissolute,  they  are  ready  to  sell 
their  services  to  an  employer  who  will  enable  them  to  eat,  drink, 
and  make  merry,  in  return  for  aiding  him  in  his  efforts  at  the 
prevention  of  any  intercourse  except  through  himself;  and  the 
hired  ruffian  now  makes  his  appearance  on  the  stage. 

Larger  revenues  are  now  required,  and  that  they  may  be 
obtained,  it  is  needed  that  there  be  new  efforts  at  the  prevention 
of  association  at  home,  or  exchange  abroad  —  without  the  pay 
ment  of  contributions  to  the  trader's  treasury.  With  every 
step  in  that  direction  we  find  a  diminution  in  the  ability  to  con 
struct  machinery  by  help  of  which  to  obtain  power  over  nature, 
or  give  utility  to  the  various  substances  provided  for  the  use  of 
man — an  increase  in  the  value  of  all  commodities  required  for  his 
use,  consequent  upon  the  increase  in  the  obstacles  to  be  sur 
mounted  before  they  can  be  obtained  —  a  decline  in  the  value  of 
man  —  and  a  diminution  in  his  progress  towards  wealth,  happi 
ness,  and  power.  How  far  the  view  thus  presented  is  in  accord 
ance  with  the  facts  of  history,  we  may  now  examine. 

In  the  absence  of  wealth,  or  of  the  power  to  command  the  ser 
vices  of  nature  that  marks  the  origin  of  society,  man  is  compelled 
to  depend  upon  his  own  unassisted  efforts  for  obtaining  a  supply 
of  the  necessaries  of  life.  His  intellectual  faculties  being  then 
scarcely  at  all  developed,  he  is  obliged  to  rely  almost  entirely 
upon  his  physical  powers ;  and  these  being  necessarily  widely 
different  in  different  persons,  there  is,  at  this  period,  the  greatest 
inequality  of  condition.  The  child  and  the  woman  are  then  the 
slaves  of  parents  and  of  husbands ;  while  those  who,  from  disease 
or  age,  are  incapacitated  from  labor,  become,  in  turn,  slaves  to 


208  CHAPTER   VIII.    §3. 

their  children,  and  are  generally  abandoned  to  perish  for  want 
of  food. 

In  the  hunter  state,  when  man  merely  appropriates  the  sponta 
neous  gifts  of  nature,  brute  force  constitutes  his  only  wealth. 
Compelled  to  constant  and  severe  exercise  in  search  of  food,  while 
deficient  in  the  clothing  required  for  the  maintenance  of  animal 
heat,  the  waste  is  great,  and  large  supplies  of  food  are  conse 
quently  required ;  as  is  shown  by  the  fact,  that  the  hunters  and 
trappers  of  the  West  are  allowed  no  less  than  eight  pounds  of 
meat  per  day. 

The  necessities  of  man  are  thus  very  great,  while  his  powers 
are  very  small.  Eight  hundred  acres  of  land,  equal  to  one  and  a 
quarter  square  miles,  are  required,  as  we  are  told,  for  furnishing 
to  man  in  the  hunter  state  the  same  quantity  of  food  that  could 
be  obtained  from  half  an  acre  under  cultivation.  Famines  being 
therefore  frequent,  men  are  forced  to  have,  at  times,  recourse 
to  the  most  nauseous  food ;  and  hence  it  is,  that  on  one  hand  we 
find  the  eaters  of  earth,  and  on  another  the  eaters  of  men  —  both 
belonging  to  that  stage  of  society  in  which  man  is  least  abundant, 
and  may  exercise  at  will  his  right  of  selecting  among  the  poor  and 
the  rich  soils,  that  then  so  much  abound.  Being,  however,  but 
nature's  slave,  she  presents  to  his  occupation  of  rich  soils,  obstacles 
so  entirely  insuperable  as  to  force  him,  as  we  have  seen,  to  com 
mence  everywhere  on  the  poorer  ones  —  those  whose  natural  quali 
ties  least  fit  them  to  yield  a  return  to  labor.  Food  has,  therefore, 
great  value,  because  obtained  at  the  cost  of  infinite  effort. 

Game  becoming,  from  year  to  year,  more  scarce,  famines  be 
come  more  frequent ;  and  this  involves  a  necessity  for  change  of 
place.  That,  in  its  turn,  produces  a  necessity  for  dispossessing 
the  fortunate  owners  of  places  in  which  food  can  more  read 
ily  be  obtained ;  and  thus  it  is,  that  deficiency  of  power  over 
nature  compels  man  everywhere  to  become  the  robber  of  his 
fellow-man.  The  land  in  which  he  was  born  having  for  him  but 
small  attractive  power — his  stay  in  it  having  been  little  else  than 
a  constant  succession  of  sufferings  for  want  of  food — he  is  always 
ready  to  shift  his  quarter  in  search  of  plunder ;  as  we  see  to  be  the 
case  with  the  Camanches,  and  other  savage  tribes  of  the  West. 
So  has  it  everywhere  been.  The  history  of  the  world,  throughout, 
shows  us  the  people  of  the  higher  and  poorer  lands — those  of  the 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF   SOCIETY.  209 

region  of  the  Himalayas,  the  early  Germans,  the  Swiss,  and  the 
Highlanders — plundering  those  whose  peaceful  habits  had  enabled 
them  to  accumulate  wealth,  and  to  cultivate  the  more  product 
ive  soils. 

In  the  early  period,  there  being  little  property  of  any  kind,  we 
see  the  strong  men  everywhere  to  have  appropriated  to  themselves 
large  bodies  of  land ;  while  men,  women,  and  children  have  been 
converted  into  property,  reduced  to  slavery,  and  forced  to  work  for 
masters  who  perform  the  part  of  traders — standing  between  those 
who  produced  and  those  who  desired  to  consume  ;  and  taking  the 
whole  results  of  the  labor  of  the  first,  while  giving  to  the  last  only 
what  was  absolutely  necessary  for  the  support  of  life.  The  whole 
business  of  the  great  proprietor  consisting  in  the  prevention  of 
any  combination  of  effort  between  his  slaves,  the  more  perfectly 
that  object  is  attained,  the  larger  is  always  the  proportion  of  the 
products  retained  by  him,  and  the  smaller  that  divided  among  those 
who  had  labored  for  their  production,  and  those  who  required 
them  for  consumption. 

Trade  thus  commences  with  the  traffic  in  bones,  muscles,  and 
blood  —  the  trade  in  man.  The  warrior  buys  his  commodities  in 
the  cheapest  market,  stealing  upon  them  in  the  dead  of  night, 
burning  their  villages,  murdering  the  males,  and  making  prisoners 
of  the  women  and  children.  His  glory  is  measured  by  the  num 
ber  of  his  murders,  and  his  wealth  grows  with  the  amount  of 
booty  he  has  been  enabled  to  secure.  Retaining  for  his  own  uses 
and  purposes  as  many  of  his  prisoners  as  are  required,  the  remain 
der  are  sold  to  other  traders,  who,  having  bought  in  the  cheapest 
market,  transport  their  property  elsewhere,  in  search  of  the  dear 
est  one,  in  which  to  sell  at  the  largest  profit. 

At  this  period  of  society,  men  are  always  found  either  among 
the  highlands  of  the  interior,  or  on  small  and  rocky  islands,  like 
those  of  the  Ionian  and  ^Egean  seas,  on  which  the  formation  of  a 
soil  for  cultivation  is  a  process  that  is  very  slow  indeed.  There 
being  no  roads,  communication  by  land  is  very  difficult,  and  the 
little  that  exists,  is  maintained  by  means  of  boats  or  ships,  for  the 
preparation  and  management  of  which  these  island  people  are 
early  fitted  ;  and  here  it  is,  therefore,  that  trade,  to  any  consider 
able  extent,  is  first  developed.  The  facilities  for  trade  being,  how 
ever,  accompanied  by  equal  facility  for  robbing  and  murdering  the 


210  CHAPTER   VIII.    §4. 

people  on  the  coast,  and  preventing  any  commerce  that  shall  not 
contribute  to  the  trader's  profit,  piracy  and  trade  grow  naturally 
up  together.  In  time,  however,  population  increasing,  it  is  found 
more  profitable  to  establish  themselves  at  places  through  which 
exchanges  must  necessarily  be  made — there  to  levy  contributions 
on  the  exchangers ;  and  thus  it  is  that  we  see  great  cities  to  have 
risen  on  the  sites  of  Tyre,  Sidon,  Corinth,  Palmyra,  Venice,  Ge 
noa,  and  others  whose  growth  was  due  exclusively  to  trade. 

§  4.  Every  act  of  association  being,  as  has  been  said,  an  act 
of  commerce,  the  maintenance  of  commerce  it  is  that  constitutes 
society.  Man,  therefore,  seeks  commerce,  association,  or  combi 
nation,  with  his  fellow-men.  It  is  the  first  necessity,  and  without 
it  he  is  not  the  being  to  which  we  attach  the  idea  of  man.  The 
warrior  opposes  obstacles  to  commerce  by  preventing  all  inter 
course  except  that  which  passes  through  himself.  The  great 
landed  proprietor  and  owner  of  slaves  is  the  middle-man  —  the 
trader  —  who  regulates  all  the  exchanges  made  by  the  people 
owned  by  him,  with  other  persons,  the  property  of  his  neighbors. 
The  trader  in  merchandise  opposes  obstacles  to  all  commerce 
carried  on  without  his  aid  —  desiring  everywhere  to  have  a  mono 
poly,  in  order  that  the  producer  of  food  may  obtain  but  little 
cloth,  and  that  the  maker  of  cloth  may  be  forced  to  content  him 
self  with  little  food — his  principle  being  to  buy  at  the  lowest  price, 
and  sell  at  the  highest. 

The  words  commerce  and  trade  are  commonly  regarded  as  con 
vertible  terms,  yet  are  the  ideas  they  express  so  widely  different 
as  to  render  it  essential  that  their  difference  be  clearly  understood. 
AU  men  are  prompted  to  associate  and  combine  with  each  other — 
to  exchange  ideas  and  services  with  each  other — and  thus  to  main 
tain  COMMERCE.  Some  men  seek  to  perform  exchanges  for  other 
men,  and  thus  to  maintain  TRADE. 

Commerce  is  the  object  everywhere  desired,  and  everywhere 
sought  to  be  accomplished.  Traffic  is  the  instrument  .used  by 
commerce  for  its  accomplishment  —  and  the  greater  the  necessity 
for  the  instrument,  the  less  is  the  power  of  those  who  require  to 
use  it.  The  nearer  the  consumer  and  the  producer  —  and  the 
more  perfect  the  power  of  association  —  the  less  is  the  necessity 
*br  the  trader's  services,  but  the  greater  are  the  powers  of  those 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF    SOCIETY.  211 

who  produce  and  consume,  and  desire  to  maintain  commerce. 
The  more  distant  they  are,  the  greater  is  the  need  of  the  trader's 
services,  and  the  greater  is  his  power — but  the  poorer  and  weaker 
become  the  producers  and  the  consumers,  and  the  smaller  is  the 
commerce. 

The  value  of  all  commodities  being  the  measure  of  the  obsta 
cles  standing  in  the  way  of  their  attainment,  it  follows  necessarily 
that  the  former  will  increase  with  every  increase  of  the  latter,  and 
that  every  step  in  that  direction  will  be  attended  by  a  decline  in  the 
value  of  man.  The  necessity  for  using  the  services  of  the  trader 
constituting  an  obstacle  standing  in  the  way  of  commerce,  and 
tending  to  enhance  the  value  of  things,  while  depressing  that  of 
man;  to  whatever  extent  it  can  be  diminished,  to  the  same 
extent  must  it  tend  to  diminish  the  value  of  the  first,  and  in 
crease  that  of  the  last.  That  diminution  comes  with  the  growth 
of  wealth  and  population,  with  the  development  of  individuality, 
and  with  the  increase  in  the  power  of  association ;  and  commerce 
grows  always  in  the  direct  ratio  of  its  increase  of  power  over 
the  instrument  known  as  trade,  precisely  as  we  see  it  to  do  in 
reference  to  roads,  wagons,  ships,  and  other  instruments.  The 
men  who  buy  and  sell,  who  traffic  and  transport,  desire  to  pre 
vent  association,  and  thus  to  preclude  the  maintenance  of  com 
merce  ;  and  the  more  perfectly  their  object  is  accomplished,  the 
larger  is  the  proportion  of  the  commodities  passing  through  their 
hands,  retained  by  them ;  and  the  smaller  the  proportion  to  be 
divided  between  the  producers  and  the  consumers. 

In  illustration  of  this  we  may  take  the  post-office,  an  admira 
ble  machine  for  maintaining  commerce  in  words  and  ideas,  but 
totally  useless  to  persons  who  live  near  together.  Separate  the 
latter,  and  the  machine  becomes  a  necessity,  with  great  diminu 
tion  in  the  power  to  maintain  commerce.  Bring  them  together 
again,  and  the  necessity  disappears,  with  great  increase  of  com 
merce —  conversation  being  accompanied  by  a  rapidity  in  the 
motion  of  ideas  that  enables  half  an  hour  to  accomplish  more 
than  might  have  been  done  with  a  correspondence  of  a  year. 
The  letter-writers  are  the  people  who  maintain  commerce,  while 
the  letter-carriers  are  the  traders,  used  by  them  for  its  mainte 
nance.  In  the  early  periods  of  society  the  obstacles  to  this  com 
merce  having  been  very  great,  its  amount  was,  consequently,  very 


212  CHAPTER   VIII.    §  4. 

small  indeed.  The  trade  in  letters  has  been  a  monopoly  of  govern 
ments  that  have  dictated  the  terms  upon  which  commerce  could 
be  maintained  —  but,  with  the  progress  of  population  and  of 
wealth,  the  people  of  various  countries  have  been  enabled  to 
diminish  the  power  of  the  trader ;  and,  as  a  necessary  conse 
quence,  commerce  has  largely  grown.  Even  now,  however,  the 
intercourse  between  this  country  and  Europe  is  heavily  taxed  by 
means  of  obstacles  thrown  in  the  way  by  Great  Britain,  which 
permits  no  letter  to  pass  over  its  limited  territory,  but  at  a  cost 
nearly  equal  to  that  required  for  transporting  it  across  the  thou 
sands  of  miles  of  ocean  that  lie  between  the  continents. 

Ships  are  not  commerce,  nor  are  wagons,  sailors,  letter-car 
riers,  brokers,  or  commission  merchants.  The  necessity  for  using 
them  constitutes  an  obstacle  standing  in  the  way  of  commerce, 
and  adding  largely  to  the  value  of  commodities  requiring  their 
aid  in  passing  from  the  consumer  to  the  producer.  The  trader 
desires  to  increase  that  value,  buying  cheaply  and  selling  dearly 
— thus  increasing  the  power  of  the  instrument  used  by  commerce. 
The  real  parties  to  the  exchange  desire  the  reverse  of  this,  thus 
diminishing  the  power  of  the  instrument,  and  increasing  that  of 
those  who  use  it.  The  greater  the  power  of  the  trader,  the  smaller 
must  be  commerce ;  whereas  the  more  perfect  the  power  of  the 
principals,  the  greater  must  it  be. 

That  the  necessity  for  employing  the  trader  and  transporter  is 
felt,  by  all  who  have  exchanges  to  make,  to  be  an  obstacle,  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  every  measure  tending  to  the  diversifica 
tion  of  employment,  or  to  the  improvement  of  communications  — 
and  consequently  to  the  reduction  of  their  power  —  is  universally 
hailed  as  leading  to  improvement  in  the  condition  of  all  other 
portions  of  society.  The  laborer  rejoices  when  demand  for  his 
services  is  brought  to  his  door  by  the  erection  of  a  mill  or  a  fur 
nace,  or  the  construction  of  a  road.  The  farmer  rejoices  in  the 
opening  of  a  market  close  at  hand,  giving  him  consumers  for  his 
food.  His  land  rejoices  in  the  home  consumption  of  its  products, 
for  its  owner  is  thereby  enabled  to  return  to  it  their  refuse  in  the 
form  of  manure.  The  planter  rejoices  in  the  erection  of  a  mill  in 
his  neighborhood,  giving  him  a  market  for  his  cotton  and  his  food. 
The  parent  rejoices  when  a  market  for  their  labor  enables  his  sons 
and  his  daughters  readily  to  supply  themselves  with  the  food  and 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF   SOCIETY.  213 

clothing  they  require.  Every  one  rejoices  in  the  growth  of  a 
home  market  for  labor  and  its  products,  for  commerce  is  then 
increasing  surely  and  rapidly ;  and  every  one  mourns  the  dimi 
nution  of  the  home  market,  for  it  is  one  whose  deficiencies  cannot 
elsewhere  be  supplied.  Labor  and  its  products  are  then  wasted 

the  power  of  consumption  diminishes  with  diminution  of  the 

power  of  production  —  commerce  becomes  languid  —  labor  and 
land  diminish  in  value  —  and  laborer  and  land-owner  become 
daily  poorer  than  before. 

Every  step  in  the  former  direction  is  attended  with  increase  in 
the  continuity  of  motion  among  the  people  who  produce  and  con 
sume — with  increase  in  the  power  of  association  and  combination 

—  and  increase  of  freedom.     Every  one  tending  to  increase  the 
power  of  the  trader,  or  any  other  of  the  instruments  used  by  com 
merce,  is  attended,  on  the  contrary,  with  a  deterioration  in  the 
condition  of  man,  and  a  decline  of  freedom ;   and  that  this  must 
necessarily  be  so,  will  be  obvious  to  all  who  reflect,  that  the  growth 
of  wealth  and  freedom  is  everywhere  seen  to  be  a  consequence  of 
man's  increased  power  over  the  machinery  required  for  the  accom 
plishment  of  his  purposes.     As  axes  and  steam-engines  are  im 
proved  in  quality,  the  men  who  use  them  acquire  a  constantly 
increased   control   over  the  constantly  augmenting  products  of 
their  labor,  attended  with  a  constant  increase  in  the  ability  to 
become  themselves  owners  of  such  machines.     As  the  machinery 
required  to  be  used  in  the  performance  of  exchanges,  is  improved 
in  quality,  the  producer  and  the  consumer  acquire  a  constantly 
increased  control  over  the  products  of  their  labor,  with  steady 
tendency  to  come  nearer  together,  and  to  emancipate  themselves 
altogether  from  the  trader's  power. 

Trade  tending  necessarily  towards  centralization,  every  step 
in  that  direction,  whether  in  the  moral  or  material  world,  is  an 
approach  to  slavery  and  death.  Commerce,  on  the  contrary, 
tending  towards  the  establishment  of  local  centres  and  local  action, 

—  every  movement  in  that  direction  is  an  approach  to  freedom. 
Whatever  tends  to  increase  the  power  of  the  one,  tends  to  destruc 
tion  of  individuality  and  decrease  in  the  power  of  association  — 
but  whatever  tends  to  increase  the  power  of  the  other,  tends  to 
development  of  mind  and  to  increase  in  the  desire  of  association, 


214  CHAPTER   VIII.    §4. 

and  in  the  power  to  enjoy  the  vast  advantages  that  everywhere 
result  from  it. 

The  movements  of  trade  being,  like  those  of  war,  greatly 
dependent  on  the  will  of  individuals,  are  necessarily  very  spas 
modic.  Collected  together  in  great  cities,  traders  find  it  easy  to 
combine  their  operations  when  it  is  desired  to  depress  the  prices 
of  the  commodities  they  seek  to  obtain,  or  to  raise  those  of  the 
things  they  already  possess ;  and  thus  do  they  obtain  power  to 
tax  both  the  consumers  and  the  producers.  Commerce,  on  the 
contrary,  tends  to  produce  steadiness  and  regularity,  and  thus  to 
diminish  the  power  of  the  trader. — Regularity  of  motion  is  essen 
tial  to  its  continuity,  as  is  well  known  to  all  persons  familiar  with 
the  movements  of  machinery.  A  steam-engine  that  was  spasmo 
dic  in  its  action  could  not  turn  out  good  cloth  or  flour,  nor  could 
the  machine  itself  long  continue  to  exist.  Slight  as  are  the 
changes  produced  by  a  little  excess  of  steam  at  one  moment,  or  a 
corresponding  deficiency  at  another,  it  was  deemed  necessary  to 
invent  a  governor,  whose  action  should  tend  to  the  production  of 
perfect  steadiness  of  motion  ;  and  the  result  was  thus  obtained. 

Without  steadiness,  there  can  be  no  durability  of  machinery ; 
and  that  quality  is  as  essential  to  society  as  it  can  be  to  the 
steam-engine  or  the  watch.  With  the  growth  of  commerce,  it 
increases,  and  therefore  is  it,  that  in  all  communities  in  which  the 
power  of  association  is  growing,  because  of  increased  diversifica 
tion  of  employments,  and  increased  development  of  individuality, 
we  witness  a  constant  increase  of  strength  and  power.  Steadiness 
diminishes  with  the  increased  necessity  for  trade  ;  and  therefore  is 
it  that  in  all  communities  in  which  employments  have  become 
less  diversified,  there  has  been  a  constant  decline  of  both  strength 
and  power.  "Strength,"  says  Carlyle,  "  does  not  manifest  itself 
in  spasms,  but  in  the  stout  bearing  of  burdens" — and  in  this  it  is, 
as  there  will  be  occasion  to  show,  that  trading  communities  have 
always  failed. 

War  and  trade  regard  man  as  the  instrument  to  be  used, 
whereas  commerce  regards  trade  as  the  instrument  to  be  used  by 
man  ;  and  therefore  it  is,  that  man  declines  when  the  power  of  the 
warrior  and  trader  grows,  and  rises  as  that  power  declines. 

Wealth  increases,  as  the  value  of  commodities  —  or  the  cost  at 
which  they  may  be  reproduced  —  declines.  Values  tend  to  de- 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF    SOCIETY.  215 

clinc  with  every  diminution  of  the  power  of  the  trader — and  there 
fore  it  is  that  we  see  wealth  to  increase  so  rapidly  when  the  con 
sumer  and  producer  are  brought  into  close  connection  with  each 
other.  Were  it  otherwise,  it  would  be  in  opposition  to  a  well- 
known  physical  law,  from  the  study  of  which  we  learn,  that  with 
every  diminution  in  the  machinery  required  for  producing  a  given 
effect,  there  is  a  diminution  of  friction  and  consequent  increase  of 
power.  The  friction  of  commerce  results  from  the  necessity  for 
the  services  of  the  trader,  his  ships,  and  his  wagons.  As  that 
necessity  diminishes  —  as  men  are  more  and  more  enabled  to  asso 
ciate —  there  is  diminution  of  friction,  with  constant  tendency 
towards  continuous  motion  among  the  various  portions  of  society, 
with  rapid  increase  of  individuality  and  of  the  power  of  further 
progress. 

Commerce,  then,  is  the  object  sought  to  be  accomplished. 
Trade  is  the  instrument.  The  more  that  man  becomes  master  of 
the  instrument,  the  greater  is  the  tendency  towards  the  accom 
plishment  of  the  object.  The  more  the  instrument  becomes 
master  of  him,  the  less  is  that  tendency,  and  the  smaller  must  be 
the  amount  of  commerce.  These  things  premised,  we  may  now 
proceed  to  examine  the  process  by  means  of  which  society  is 
formed. 

§  5.  In  science,  as  the  reader  has  already  seen,  it  is  the  most 
abstract  and  general  that  is  first  developed,  leaving  the  concrete 
and  special  to  follow  slowly  in  the  rear ;  and  so  it  is  with  the 
pursuits  of  man.  To  rob  and  murder  our  fellow-men  —  to  seek 
glory  at  the  cost  of  the  destruction  of  towns  and  cities  —  requires 
no  scientific  knowledge ;  whereas  agriculture  is  a  pursuit  calling 
at  every  moment  for  the  aid  of  science.  So,  again,  is  it  with  trad 
ing,  which  makes  but  small  demand  upon  the  intellectual  faculties. 
To  the  postman  it  is  unimportant  whether  the  letter  he  delivers 
carries  with  it  news  of  war  or  peace,  births  or  deaths.  To  the 
dealer  in  cotton  or  sugar,  it  matters  little  whether  his  commodities 
grow  on  the  hills  or  in  the  valleys,  on  trees,  or  on  shrubs.  To  the 
dealer  in  slaves,  it  is  immaterial  whether  the  chattel  be  male  or 
female,  parent  or  child ;  all  that  he  requires  to  know  being,  whe 
ther,  having  bought  it  cheaply,  he  can  sell  it  dearly.  Trade  is  to 


216  CHAPTER    VIII.    §  5. 

commerce  what  mathematics  are  to  science.  Both  are  instruments 
to  be  used  for  the  accomplishment  of  an  object. 

The  abstract  mathematics  deal  simply  with  number  and  form, 
whereas  chemistry  looks  to  the  decomposition,  and  physiology  to 
the  recomposition,  of  the  material  of  bodies.  Trade  deals  with 
bodies  to  be  moved  or  exchanged,  having  no  reference  to  the 
qualities  by  which  one  body  is  distinguished  from  another; 
whereas,  commerce  looks  to  the  decomposition  and  recomposition 
of  the  various  forces  of  society  resulting  from  the  power  to  asso 
ciate,  and  the  exercise  of  the  habit  of.  association.  Trade, 
abstract  and  general,  is,  like  war,  early  developed,  whereas 
agriculture  and  commerce  require,  for  their  development,  a  great 
advance  in  population,  wealth,  and  power.  The  savage  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  or  of  the  islands  of  the  South  Pacific,  is  as 
keen  a  trader  as  the  one  who  has  served  his  apprenticeship  in 
New  York  or  London  ;  and  the  first  desire  of  the  Russian  serf  is 
to  become  a  dealer  in  the  produce  of  the  labor  of  other  hands. 

In  the  early  periods  of  society,  robbery  and  murder  were  deified 
under  the  names  of  Odin,  and  of  Mars.  Alexander  and  Caesar, 
Tamerlane  and  Nadir  Shah,  Drake  and  Cavendish,  Wallenstein 
and  Napoleon,  were  g¥eat,  because  of  the  number  of  murders  they 
had  committed,  and  of  towns  and  cities  they  had  ruined.  The 
"  merchant-princes"  of  Venice,  and  of  Genoa,  were  great,  because 
of  the  large  fortunes  they  had  realized  from  buying  and  selling 
slaves  and  other  merchandise — doing  nothing  themselves  but 
stand  between  the  people  who  produced  and  those  who  con 
sumed —  thus  adding  largely  to  the  value  of  the  commodities 
passing  through  their  hands,  at  the  cost  of  all  who  found 
themselves  forced  to  contribute  to  the  growth  of  their  enormous 
fortunes. 

In  this  condition  of  society,  the  only  qualities  that  command 
respect  among  men  are  brute  force  and  craft  —  the  one  properly 
represented  by  Ajax,  while  the  other  is  personified  in  the  wise 
Ulysses.  The  morals  of  war  and  of  trade  are  the  same.  The 
warrior  rejoices  in  deceiving  his  antagonist,  all  being  fair  in  war ; 
while  the  trader  acquires  the  respect  of  his  friends  by  help  of  a 
large  fortune,  acquired,  perhaps,  by  supplying  the  poor  negroes 
of  Africa  with  guns  that  exploded  at  the  first  attempt  to  fire 
them  —  or  cloth  that  fell  to  pieces  on  the  first  attempt  to  wash 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF   SOCIETY.  217 

it.  In  both,  the  end  is  seen  to  sanctify  the  means  —  the  only 
test  of  right  being  found  in  success  or  failure.  Pre-eminence  of 
soldiers  and  traders  may,  therefore,  be  regarded  as  an  evidence 
of  barbarism. 

The  object  of  the  warrior-chief  being  that  of  preventing  the 
existence  of  any  motion  in  society  except  that  which  centres  in 
himself,  he  monopolizes  land,  and  destroys  the  power  of  volun 
tary  association  among  the  men  he  uses  as  his  instruments.  The 
soldier,  obeying  the  word  of  command,  is  so  far  from  holding 
himself  responsible  to  God,  or  man,  for  the  observance  of  the 
rights  of  person  or  of  property,  that  he  glories  in  the  extent  of 
his  robberies,  and  in  the  number  of  his  murders.  The  man  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains  adorns  his  person  with  the  scalps  of  his 
butchered  enemies,  while  the  more  civilized  murderer  contents 
himself  with  adding  a  ribbon  to  the  decoration  of  his  coat ;  but 
both  are  savages  alike.  The  trader  —  equally  with  the  soldier 
seeking  to  prevent  any  movement  except  that  which  centres  in 
himself — also  uses  irresponsible  machines.  The  sailor  is  among 
the  most  brutalized  of  human  beings,  bound,  like  the  soldier,  to 
obey  orders,  at  the  risk  of  having  his  back  seamed  by  the  applica 
tion  of  the  whip.  The  human  machines  used  by  war  and  trade 
are  the  only  ones,  except  the  negro  slave,  wrho  are  now  flogged. 

The  soldier  desires  labor  to  be  cheap,  that  recruits  may  readily 
be  obtained.  The  great  land-owner  desires  it  may  be  cheap,  that 
he  may  be  enabled  to  appropriate  to  himself  a  large  proportion 
of  the  proceeds  of  his  land  ;  and  the  trader  desires  it  to  be  cheap, 
that  he  may  be  enabled  to  dictate  the  terms  upon  which  he  will 
buy,  as  well  as  those  upon  which  he  will  sell. 

The  object  of  all  being  thus  identical — that  of  obtaining  power 
over  their  fellow-men — it  is  no  matter  of  surprise  that  we  find  the 
trader  and  the  soldier  so  uniformly  helping,  and  being  helped  by, 
each  other.  The  bankers  of  Home  were  as  ready  to  furnish  ma 
terial  aid  to  Caesar,  Pompey,  and  Augustus,  as  are  now  those  of 
London,  Paris,  Amsterdam,  and  Vienna,  to  grant  it  to  the  Em 
perors  of  France,  Austria,  and  Russia  —  and  as  indifferent  as 
they  in  relation  to  the  end  for  whose  attainment  it  was  destined 
to  be  used.  War  and  trade  thus  travel  together,  as  is  shown 
by  the  history  of  the  world ;  the  only  difference  between  wars 
made  for  purposes  of  conquest,  and  those  for  the  maintenance  of 

YOL.  I.— 15 


218  CHAPTER   VIII.    §  6. 

monopolies  of  trade,  being,  that  the  virulence  of  the  latter  is  much 
greater  than  is  that  of  the  former.  The  conqueror — seeking  poli 
tical  power — is  sometimes  moved  by  a  desire  to  improve  the  condi 
tion  of  his  fellow-men  ;  but  the  trader,  in  pursuit  of  power,  is  ani 
mated  by  no  other  idea  than  that  of  buying  in  the  cheapest 
market  and  selling  in  the  dearest  —  cheapening  merchandise 
in  the  one,  even  at  the  cost  of  starving  the  producers,  and  in 
creasing  his  price  in  the  other,  even  at  the  cost  of  starving  the 
consumers.  Both  profit  by  whatever  tends  to  diminution  in  the 
power  of  voluntary  association,  and  consequent  decline  of  com 
merce.  The  soldier  forbids  the  holding  of  meetings  among  his 
subjects.  The  slave-owner  interdicts  his  people  from  assembling 
together,  except  at  such  times,  and  in  such  places,  as  meet  his 
approbation.  The  shipmaster  rejoices  when  the  men  of  England 
separate  from  each  other,  and  transport  themselves  by  hundreds  of 
thousands  to  Canada  and  Australia,  because  it  enhances  freights ; 
and  the  trader  rejoices  because  the  more  widely  men  are  scat 
tered,  the  more  they  need  the  service  of  the  middle-man,  and  the 
richer  and  more  powerful  does  he  become  at  their  expense. 

§  6.  Closely  connected  with  the  movements  of  the  trader,  and 
next  in  the  order  of  development,  come  the  labors  given  to  effect 
ing  changes  of  place.  In  the  early  periods,  these  are  almost  alto 
gether  limited  to  changing  the  places  of  men  who  are  held  as 
slaves,  as  we  see  now  to  be  the  case  in  many  parts  of  Africa ; 
and  to  some  extent  in  our  Southern  States.  By  degrees,  how 
ever,  the  camel-driver,  the  wagoner,  and  the  sailor,  appear  upon 
the  scene  —  a  highly  important  portion  of  society,  because  of  the 
great  quantity  of  muscular  effort  required  for  moving  a  little 
merchandise.  Here,  again,  we  see  that  the  earliest  in  develop 
ment  is  that  which  makes  least  demand  for  knowledge.  To  the 
wagoner,  it  is  indifferent  what  it  is  he  carries,  whether  cotton, 
rum,  or  prayer-books  ;  and  to  the  sailor,  it  is  immaterial  whether 
he  carries  gunpowder  to  the  African,  or  clothing  to  the  people  of 
the  Sandwich  Islands  —  provided  he  is  satisfied  with  the  price 
paid  for  the  work  of  transportation.  With  the  growth  of  wealth 
and  population,  and  consequent  increase  in  the  power  of  associa 
tion,  the  necessity  for  transportation  declines,  while  the  facilities 
for  effecting  changes  of  place  as  steadily  increase.  The  turnpike 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF   SOCIETY.  219 

road,  and  the  railroad,  replace  in  quick  succession  the  Indian 
path,  as  the  ship  and  the  steamer  replace  the  canoe ;  and  with  every 
step  in  this  direction,  there  is  a  diminution  in  the  proportion  of 
society  required  to  be  so  employed,  accompanied  by  an  increase 
in  the  proportion  of  the  muscular  and  mental  powers  that  may 
be  given  to  the  work  of  increasing  the  quantity  of  things  suscep 
tible  of  being  carried. 

§  7.  Next  in  the  order  of  development  come  mechanical  and 
chemical  changes  of  matter  in  form,  more  concrete  and  special, 
and  requiring  a  much  higher  degree  of  knowledge. 

A  branch  torn  from  a  tree  sufficed  Cain  for  the  murder  of  his 
brother  Abel ;  but  he  would  have  required  to  understand  the 
nature  of  the  material  to  be  used  for  making  a  knife,  before  he 
could  have  converted  it  into  a  bow,  or  the  trunk  from  which 
it  had  been  torn,  into  a  canoe.  The  skin  may  be  torn  from 
a  deer  and  used  for  a  garment ;  but  it  requires  some  knowledge 
to  enable  the  poor  savage  of  the  West  to  convert  it  into  a  moc 
casin.  The  stone  may  be  used  as  a  weapon  of  offence,  but  it 
requires  some  acquaintance  with  the  properties  of  matter  to  dis 
cover  that  it  contains  iron,  and  still  further  knowledge  to  be 
enabled  to  convert  iron  into  swords  and  spades. 

With  that  knowledge  conies  man's  power  over  matter  —  or,  in 
other  words,  his  wealth  ;  and  with  every  increase  of  power,  he  is 
more  and  more  enabled  to  live  in  connection  with  his  fellow-men 
—  associating  with  them  for  the  establishment,  or  maintenance, 
of  their  rights  of  person  and  of  property.  Motion  becomes  more 
continuous,  with  steady  increase  of  its  rapidity ;  and  with  every 
such  increase  society  tends  to  take  upon  itself  a  more  natural  and 
consistent  form  —  the  proportion  of  those  who  live  by  appropria 
tion  steadily  declining,  with  corresponding  increase  in  the  propor 
tion  of  those  who  live  by  the  exertion  of  their  physical  and  intel 
lectual  faculties.  Right  tends-,  therefore,  to  triumph  over  might, 
with  diminution  in  the  proportion  of  the  labors  of  the  community 
required  for  self-defence,  and  corresponding  increase  in  the  pro 
portion  that  may  be  given  to  the  work  of  obtaining  power  over 
the  forces  of  nature ;  and  with  every  step  in  this  direction  the  feel 
ing  of  the  responsibility  which  attends  the  exercise  of  power  tends 
steadily  to  increase. 


220  CHAPTER   VIII.    §  8. 

§  8.  Following  the  above  in  order  of  development,  come  the 
labors  given  to  effecting  vital  changes  in  the  forms  of  matter,  ana 
attended  with  an  augmentation  of  the  quantity  of  things  suscepti 
ble  of  being  converted,  transported,  sold,  or  bought. 

The  labors  of  the  miller  make  no  change  in  the  quantity  of  food 
to  be  eaten,  nor  do  those  of  the  spinner  increase  the  quantity  of 
cotton  to  be  worn  ;  but  to  those  of  the  farmer  we  are  indebted  for 
an  increase  in  the  quantity  of  corn  and  of  wool. 

The  exercise  of  that  power  is  limited  to  the  earth  alone.  Man 
fashions  and  exchanges,  but  he  cannot,  with  all  his  science, 
fashion  the  elements  by  which  he  is  surrounded,  into  a  grain  of 
corn,  or  a  lock  of  wool.  A  part  of  his  labor  being  given 
to  the  fashioning  of  the  great  machine  itself,  produces  changes 
that  are  permanent :  the  drain,  once  cut,  remaining  a  drain ;  and 
the  limestone,  once  reduced  to  lime,  not  again  becoming  lime 
stone.  Passing  into  the  food  of  man  and  animals,  it  ever  after 
takes  its  part  in  the  same  round  with  the  clay  with  which  it  has 
been  combined.  The  iron  rusting,  gradually  passes  into  the 
soil,  to  take  its  part  with  the  clay  and  the  lime.  That  portion 
of  man's  labor  gives  him  wages  while  preparing  the  machine  for 
greater  future  production  ;  but  that  which  he  expends  in  fashion 
ing  and  exchanging  the  products  of  the  machine  produces  tempo 
rary  results,  and  gives  him  wages  alone.  Whatever  tends  to 
dimmish  the  proportion  of  labor  required  for  fashioning  and  ex 
changing,  tends  to  augment  the  proportion  that  may  be  given  to 
increasing  the  quantity  of  things  that  may  be  changed  again  in 
form,  and  to  developing  the  powers  of  the  earth ;  and  thus,  while 
increasing  the  present  return  to  labor,  preparing  for  further 
increase. 

The  first  poor  cultivator  obtains  for  his  year's  wages  a  hun 
dred  bushels,  the  pounding  of  which  between  stones  requires  much 
labor ;  and  yet  is  most  imperfectly  done.  Had  he  a  mill  in  the 
neighborhood,  he  would  have  better  flour;  and  he  would  have 
almost  his  whole  time  to  bestow  upon  his  land.  He  pulls  up 
his  grain.  Had  he  a  scythe,  he  would  have  more  time  for  the 
preparation  of  the  machine  of  production.  He  loses  his  axe, 
and  it  requires  many  days  of  travel  to  enable  him  to  obtain  an 
other.  His  machine  loses  the  time  and  the  manure,  both  of 
which  would  have  been  saved  had  the  axe-maker  been  at  hand. 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF    SOCIETY.  221 

The  real  advantage  derived  from  the  mill  and  the  scythe,  and 
from  the  proximity  of  the  axe-maker,  consists  simply  in  economiz 
ing  time,  and  enabling  him  to  devote  his  labor  more  continuously 
to  the  improvement  of  the  great  machine  of  production  ;  and  such 
is  the  case  with  all  the  machinery  of  preparation  and  exchange. 
The  plough  enabling  him  to  do  as  much  in  one  day  as  with  a 
spade  he  could  do  in  many,  the  time  thus  gained  may  be  ap 
plied  to  drainage.  The  steam-engine  draining  as  much  as  with 
out  it  would  require  thousands  of  days  of  labor,  he  has  now 
more  leisure  to  marl,  or  lime,  his  land.  The  more  he  can  ex 
tract  from  his  machine  the  greater  is  its  value — everything  he 
takes  being,  by  the  very  act  of  taking  it,  changed  in  form  to  fit 
it  for  further  production.  The  machine,  therefore,  improves  by 
use,  whereas  spades,  and  ploughs,  and  steam-engines,  and  all 
other  instruments  used  by  man,  are  but  the  various  forms  into 
which  he  fashions  parts  of  the  great  original  machine,  to  dis 
appear  in  the  act  of  being  used  ;  as  much  so  as  food,  though  not 
quite  so  rapidly.  The  earth  is  the  great  labor  savings'  bank,  and 
the  value  to  man  of  all  other  things,  is  in  the  direct  ratio  of  their 
tendency  to  aid  him  in  increasing  his  deposits  in  that  only  bank 
whose  dividends  are  constantly  increasing,  while  its  capital  is  per 
petually  augmenting.  That  it  may  continue  for  ever  so  to  do, 
all  that  it  asks  is,  that  motion  may  be  maintained  by  returning  to 
it  the  refuse  of  its  produce  —  the  manure  ;  and  that  such  may  be 
the  case,  it  is  required  that  the  consumer  and  the  producer  take 
their  places  by  each  other.  That  done,  every  change  that  is 
effected  becomes  permanent,  and  tends  to  facilitate  other  and 
greater  changes.  The  whole  business  of  the  farmer  consisting 
in  making  and  improving  soils,  the  earth  rewards  him  for  his 
kindness  by  giving  him  more  and  more  food  the  more  attention 
he  bestows  upon  her. 

The  great  pursuit  of  man  is  agriculture.  It  is  the  science  that 
requires  the  greatest  amount  and  variety  of  knowledge,  and  there 
fore  is  it  that  it  is  everywhere  latest  in  development.  It  is  only 
now,  indeed,  that  it  is  becoming  a  science ;  and  it  is  doing  so  by 
aid  of  geological,  chemical,  and  physiological  knowledge,  the 
most  of  which  is,  itself,  but  the  result  of  the  labors  of  the  present 
day.  It  is  later,  too,  because  most  exposed  to  interference  from 
soldiers,  traders,  and  others  engaged  in  the  work  of  appropria- 


222  CHAPTER   VIII.    §  9. 

tion.  The  warrior  feels  himself  safe  within  the  walls  of  his  cas 
tle  ;  the  trader,  the  shoemaker,  the  tailor,  the  maker  of  swords 
and  battle-axes,  shut  themselves  up  within  the  town ;  and  that 
town  is  itself  always  placed  on  the  highest  land  of  the  neighbor 
hood,  with  a  view  to  the  security  of  its  occupants  —  as  may  be 
seen  in  the  early  ones  of  Greece  and  India,  Italy  and  France.  The 
agricultural  laborer,  on  the  contrary,  being  forced  to  labor  with 
out  the  city  walls,  his  property  is  ravaged  on  every  occasion  of 
difference  between  the  trading  community  of  which  he  forms  a 
part,  and  those  to  which  he  is  a  neighbor.  On  every  such  occa 
sion,  motion  is  intermitted,  and  he  is  forced  to  seek  protection  for 
himself  and  his  family  within  the  city  walls — a  proceeding  involv 
ing  daily  intermission  of  effort  by  reason  of  the  distance  between 
the  scene  of  his  daily  labor  and  his  place  of  refuge.  The  more 
the  power  of  man  over  nature,  the  greater  is  the  power  of  asso 
ciation  for  the  general  security,  and  the  greater  the  tendency  to 
wards  the  maintenance  of  peace — and  then  it  is  that  wealth  tends 
to  increase  with  daily  augmenting  force. 

§  9.  Last  in  the  order  of  development  comes  commerce.  Every 
act  of  association  being  an  act  of  commerce,  the  latter  tends,  neces 
sarily,  to  increase  as,  with  the  growth  of  power  over  nature,  men  are 
enabled  to  obtain  larger  supplies  of  food  from  constantly  diminish 
ing  surfaces.  While  cultivating  the  poor  soils  alone,  and  forced 
to  remain  distant  from  each  other,  the  power  to  maintain  com 
merce  scarcely  exists,  as  we  see  to  be  now  the  case  in  Russia, 
Portugal,  Brazil,  and  Mexico  ;  but  then  it  is  that  the  power  of  the 
soldier,  the  trader,  and  of  others  who  live  by  appropriation,  is  the 
greatest.  With  the  progress  of  population  and  wealth,  men  find 
themselves  enabled  to  cultivate  the  rich  soils  of  the  earth ;  and 
now  they  have  more  leisure  for  the  improvement  of  their  minds, 
and  for  the  construction  of  machinery  required  for  obtaining 
increase  of  power.  This,  in  turn,  enables  them  to  improve  their 
modes  of  cultivation,  while  diversity  of  employment  brings  with 
it  the  power  of  association  and  the  development  of  individuality, 
with  greater  feeling  of  responsibility,  and  greater  power  of  pro 
gress  ;  and  thus  it  is  that  each  helps,  while  being  helped  by,  the 
others.  The  greater  the  commerce,  the  less  is  the  necessity  for 
the  trader's  services  —  the  less  is  theyropottion  required  to  pay 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF   SOCIETY.  223 

for  those  services,  the  larger  the  proportion  that  may  be  given  to 
developing  the  powers  of  the  land,  and  the  more  rapid  is  the  fur 
ther  growth  of  commerce. 

§  10.  The  machine  of  society,  like  that  of  the  human  frame,  is 
composed  of  portions  acting  independently,  yet  all  in  perfect  har 
mony,  each  with  every  other.  The  stomach  acts  while  the  eyes 
are  closed  in  sleep  ;  and  the  ear  is  open,  though  the  nerves  are 
unexcited.  Each  of  these  changes  in  its  constituent  parts  from 
day  to  day — the  machine  remaining  still  the  same  ;  and  the  more 
rapid  the  assimilation  of  the  food  required  for  the  accomplishment 
of  those  changes,  the  more  healthful  is  the  action  of  the  whole  ; 
and  the  greater  is  the  tendency  to  stability  and  durability  of  the 
machine  itself.  So  is  it,  too,  with  society  —  its  tendency  towards 
steadiness  and  durability  being  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  rapidity 
of  motion  among  its  various  parts,  and  the  activity  of  commerce. 

The  more  natural  the  form,  the  greater,  as  we  everywhere  see, 
is  the  tendency  to  continuity  of  existence.  Discharge  a  load  of 
earth,  and  it  will  at  once  take  upon  itself  nearly  the  form  of  a  py 
ramid  ;  and  so  will  the  pile  continue  to  do,  as  long  as  matter  shall 
continue  to  be  added  —  the  base  widening  steadily  as  the  apex 
rises  in  height.  The  Himalaya,  and  the  Andes,  have  endured  for 
ever,  because  they  have  the  natural  form,  that  of  a  cone  or  pyra 
mid  —  the  most  beautiful  of  all  the  forms  of  which  matter  is  sus 
ceptible.  How  durable  it  is,  is  shown  by  the  Egyptian  pyramids 
—  remaining,  as  they  do,  after  the  lapse  of  thousands  of  years, 
almost  as  perfect  as  they  were  in  the  days  of  the  sovereigns  by 
whose  orders  they  were  built.  Turning  next  to  the  societary 
machine,  we  see  that  everywhere,  as  wealth  and  numbers  increase, 
its  members  are  engaged  in  sinking  its  foundations  deeper  — 
bringing  to  light  the  marl  and  the  lime,  the  coal  and  the  ore  with 
which  the  earth  so  much  abounds  ;  that,  as  the  foundations  deepen, 
the  height  increases,  with  diminution  of  the  proportion  of  the 
apex;  and  that  every  movement  in  this  direction  is  attended 
with  increase  in  the  local  attraction  required  for  producing  the 
same  double  motion  seen  existing  throughout  the  universe  ;  and 
to  which  are  due  the  perfect  harmony  and  wonderful  durability  of 
the  system. 

Looking  to  the  vegetable  world,  we  see,  everywhere,  that  the 


224  CHAPTER   VIII.    §  10. 

tendency  to  durability  is  in  the  ratio  of  the  depth  and  spread  of 
the  root,  as  compared  with  the  length  of  the  stem.  The  tree, 
growing  in  a  forest,  and  surrounded  by  others  like  itself — 
"cabined,  cribbed,  confined" — obeys  but  the  single  centraliz 
ing  influence,  and  runs  up  rapidly  in  quest  of  light  and  air  ;  of 
which  it  would  be  deprived  were  it  to  permit  others  to  overtop  it. 
Making,  however,  but  very  little  root,  its  want  of  stability  is  soon 
exhibited  when,  by  reason  of  the  clearing  of  the  trees  around  it, 
it  becomes  exposed  to  the  action  of  the  winds.  Those,  on  the 
contrary,  whiv;h  have  grown  in  situations  in  which  light  and  air 
have  been  abundant,  have  roots  proportioned  to  their  height  and 
breadth,  and  stand  for  centuries  —  as  has  been  the  case  with  so 
many  of  the  oaks  of  England. 

The  greater  the  number  of  people  that  can  live  together,  the 
greater  must  be  the  power  of  association  —  the  more  uniform, 
regular,  and  rapid  must  be  the  motion  —  the  more  perfect  must 
be  the  development  of  the  faculties — and  the  greater  the  tendency 
to  sink  deeply  the  foundations  of  society,  by  means  of  the  deve 
lopment  of  the  wondrous  treasures  of  the  earth.  The  greater 
the  tendency  towards  utilizing  the  various  forces  presenting  them 
selves  in  the  form  of  water-powers,  masses  of  coal,  iron,  lead,  cop 
per,  zinc,  and  other  metals,  the  greater,  necessarily,  is  the  tend 
ency  to  the  formation  of  local  centres — neutralizing  the  attraction 
towards  the  political  or  commercial  capital;  with  steady  tendency 
to  decline  of  centralization,  and  constant  diminution  in  the  pro 
portion  borne  by  the  soldiers,  the  politicians,  the  traders,  and  all 
others  of  the  class  that  lives  by  appropriation,  to  the  mass  of 
which  society  is  composed ;  and  with  a  constant  tendency  to  have 
society  itself  assume  that  form  which  everywhere  is  seen  to  com 
bine  beauty,  strength,  and  durability — that  of  a  cone  or  pyramid. 

§  11.  A  tree  conforming  in  its  structural  provisions  to  the 
conditions  above  described  • —  as  may  be  seen  in  the  diagram  here 
given  —  and  its  ramifications,  both  of  roots  and  branches,  serving 
to  illustrate  the  natural  history  of  societary  commerce — advantage 
may  be  derived  from  presenting  somewhat  in  detail  the  illustra 
tive  facts  in  the  correspondence.  Let,  then,  the  stem  be  com 
merce,  in  our  meaning  of  the  term,  and  the  roots  its  subjects.  In 
the  earliest,  or  hunter,  state,  the  business  of  man  is  simple  appro- 


P  .  224. 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF   SOCIETY.  225 

priation  —  the  wild  animals  and  their  products,  and  the  vegeta 
bles  and  the  fruits,  produced  without  his  care,  and  grown  without 
his  culture,  being  his  prey.  In  this  stage  there  is  neither  trade, 
manufactures,  nor  agriculture ;  and  the  young  plant,  in  parallel 
circumstances,  shows  but  the  earliest  branches  and  the  slightly 
produced  topmost  roots.  Having  no  terms  precisely  descriptive 
of  the  slighter  stages  of  societary  growth — the  savage,  the  pasto 
ral,  and  patriarchal  states  through  which  we  arrive  at  that  to 
which  trade  and  transportation  give  their  peculiar  character — the 
diagram,  as  the  reader  will  perceive,  is  necessarily  deficient  in  the 
branches  required  for  their  methodic  illustration. 

In  the  second  era,  property  being  held  by  title  somewhat  more 
permanent  than  mere  occupation  and  manual  possession  —  trade 
arises,  and  is  founded  on  its  conventional  recognition.  Change 
of  place  being  then  effected  by  the  rudest  methods  of  transporta 
tion,  the  waters  and  the  air  —  root  branches  —  are  the  natural 
forces  then  used  for  the  accomplishment  of  that  object — the  canoe 
and  the  sail-boat  utilizing  the  rivers  and  the  winds.  The  sailor 
and  the  merchant,  and  the  land-carrier  with  his  camel,  or  his  ox, 
or  his  horse — and  perhaps  his  wagon — constitute  now  the  import 
ant  portions  of  the  societary  system. 

Next,  in  order,  come  manufactures,  corresponding  with  the 
roots  that  are  third  in  order,  for  among  the  earliest  subjects  that 
mark  this  epoch  the  minerals  and  earths  are  essential  both  as  ma 
terials  and  implements.  Long  before  this,  however,  the  savage  has 
been  accustomed  to  effect  changes  in  the  forms  of  matter — his  bow 
having  been  made  of  wood,  and  its  string  of  the  sinews  of  the  deer 
—  and  his  canoe  having  been  of  bark  and  provided  with  a  skin  in 
place  of  sail ;  but  it  is  to  a  somewhat  advanced  stage  of  human 
progress  we  are  required  to  look  for  the  pursuits  of  men  connected 
with  the  conversion  of  ores  into  implements,  or  of  cotton  and  wool 
into  cloth.  The  precious  metals,  gold,  silver,  and  copper — being, 
like  the  wild  fruits  and  animals,  found  ready,  or  nearly  so,  for  use 
— are  early  employed  for  service  and  for  ornament ;  but  iron,  the 
great  civilizer,  and  mineral  coal,  the  great  agent  for  its  conver 
sion,  are  among  the  latest  of  human  triumphs  over  the  mighty 
forces  of  nature. 

To  the  branch,  manufactures,  therefore,  the  metals  and  earths — 
root  branches — very  exactly  correspond  in  necessary  relation,  and 


226  CHAPTER   VIII.    §11. 

in  the  date  of  their  development.  This  is  the  stage  of  scientific 
progress  ;  and  here,  accordingly,  we  meet  phenomena  directly  iii 
accordance  with  those  observed  in  reference  to  the  occupation  of 
the  earth,  and  to  which  the  reader's  attention  has  before  been 
called.  The  cultivator  of  the  rich  soils  is  enabled  to  return,  with 
augmented  force,  to  poorer  ones  that  had  been  early  occupied ; 
and  now  it  is  that  —  developing  their  latent  powers  —  he  places 
them  first  upon  the  list,  when  before  they  had  stood  last ;  as  is 
seen,  to  so  great  an  extent,  to  be  the  case  in  England  and  in 
France.*  In  like  manner,  the  science  of  the  later  period — re 
turning  upon  the  rude  commerce  of  the  earlier  one  —  searches  out 
the  hidden  elements  of  the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms,  and 
the  chemical  and  mechanical  properties  of  the  liquid  and  elastic 
fluids,  and  places  them  under  the  control  of  man  —  thus  adding 
largely  to  his  force,  while  in  a  corresponding  degree  diminishing 
the  resistance  offered  to  his  further  efforts.  The  water,  at  first  used 
only  as  a  beverage — or  because  of  its  capacity  for  supporting  a 
boat  or  a  ship  —  now  yields  steam ;  and  the  air,  at  first  valued 
only  as  required  for  breathing  purposes  —  or  as  a  wind  force  in 
sailing — is  now  resolved  into  its  gases,  and  made  to  furnish  light 
and  heat ;  while  in  a  thousand  other  ways  aiding  the  efforts,  or 
contributing  to  the  enjoyments,  of  man.  The  animal  and  vege 
table  worlds  that,  in  the  earlier  ages,  had  yielded  to  the  savage 
only  food  and  medicine,  now  contribute  acids,  alkalies,  oils,  gums, 
resins,  drugs,  dyes,  perfumes,  hair,  silk,  wool,  cotton,  and  lea 
ther  —  furnishing,  under  the  touch  of  manufacturing  skill  and 
science,  clothing,  tenements,  conveniences,  comforts,  and  luxuries 
of  life,  in  a  thousand  forms  of  beauty  and  of  use. 

Next,  and  last,  comes  agriculture  —  necessarily  embracing  the 
discoveries  and  agencies  of  all  the  earlier  stages  of  advance  in 
knowledge  and  in  power.  Beginning  rudely  in  the  savage  state, 
it  grows  a  little  in  the  age  of  trade  ;  but  for  its  greatest  growth 

*  In  his  recent  work,  (Des  Systtmes  de  Culture,}  Mons.  Passy  tells  his 
readers  that  in  those  countries  in  which  agriculture  has  improved,  "the 
soils  that,  in  past  times,  were  regarded  as  too  poor  to  merit  continued  and 
regular  cultivation,  are  now  regarded  as  the  best,"  and  after  describing  the 
course  of  things  in  this  respect  in  Belgium  and  in  France,  says  that  "in 
England  it  is  an  established  fact  that  in  various  counties  the  lands  denomi 
nated  good  are  farmed  at  twenty-two  to  twenty-five  shillings  an  acre,  while 
those  formerly  regarded  as  poor  let  for  thirty  to  thirty-five  shillings."  Simi 
lar  changes  are  now.  as  he  also  shows,  taking  place  in  France. 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF   SOCIETY.  227 

it  waits  the  age  of  manufactures — that  of  scientific  development — 
in  which  man  is  seen  already  to  have  obtained,  to  a  great  extent, 
control  and  direction  of  the  natural  forces  provided  for  his  use. 
Appropriating  the  ready-formed  elements  of  nature,  it  commands 
the  aid  of  trade  and  transportation,  while  pressing  into  its  ser 
vice  all  the  chemical  and  mechanical  forces  furnished  by  the  age 
of  manufactures  —  thus  covering  all  the  progress  of  every  antece 
dent  stage.  It  demands  not  only  the  physiology  of  vegetable  and 
animal  life,  and  the  chemistry  of  the  organic  and  inorganic  world, 
but  also  the  conveniences  and  appliances  of  the  transporting  age, 
as  exhibited  in  roads,  ships,  and  bridges ;  and  all  the  chemical 
and  mechanical  powers  of  the  manufacturing  one — finding  its  sub 
jects,  implements,  and  agencies  in  the  material,  and  in  the  forces, 
of  every  branch  of  human  commerce  before  developed. 

The  secondary  branches  of  the  tree  mark  the  successive  produc 
tion  of  the  agencies  of  the  several  classes  ;  and  thus  it  is,  that,  in 
the  topmost  branch,  the  hunter  is  followed  by  the  soldier,  the 
statesman,  and  the  annuitant  —  all  non-producers,  growing  in 
their  order  from  the  same  stem,  and  with  the  growth  of  civiliza 
tion  ;  but  diminishing  in  their  proportions  as  society  becomes 
more  and  more  developed.  In  the  infant  state,  this  top  branch — 
whether  in  the  natural  or  social  world — constituted  the  whole  tree. 

The  next  branch — transportation — sprouts  into  carriers  by  land 
and  water,  and  traders  in  merchandise  ;*  and,  finally,  when  science 
and  civilization  have  been  well  matured,  into  engineers  ;  but  the 
proportion  to  the  mass  of  which  society  is  composed,  declines  as 
the  powers  of  man  become  more  and  more  developed,  and  as 
society  takes  more  and  more  its  natural  form. 

The  third  —  consisting  of  chemical  and  mechanical  changes  of 
form,  swelling  out,  as  the  reader  sees,  into  mechanics,  architects, 
miners,  machinists,  and  numerous  other  varieties  —  greatly  over 
balances  the  classes  that  live  by  appropriation,  trade,  and  trans 
portation. 

Lastly,  we  have  the  agriculturists,  branching,  successively,  into 
cattle-breeders,  poultry-breeders,  dairymen,  gardeners,  orchard- 
ists,  and  tillers,  to  fulfil  the  grand  underlying  function  of  produ 
cers  for  all  other  laborers  in  the  work  of  social  commerce. 

*  Trade  in  men,  held  as  slaves,  commences  in  the  earliest  period  —  that 
of  mere  brute  force. 


CHAPTER  VIII.    §  11. 

The  reader  must  carry  with  him,  in  the  theory  of  the  parallels 
here  attempted,  the  recollection  that  our  fyure  is  capable  of  no 
more  than  contemporaneous  presentment  of  the  social  distribution 
of  the  various  functions.  The  topmost  branches  are,  in  point  of 
fact,  the  last  produced  by  its  growth ;  and  the  earliest  are  re 
solved,  by  change  of  form  and  increase  of  substance,  into  the  low 
est  boughs  of  the  perfected  tree ;  but  the  identity  of  the  boughs  is, 
in  fact,  as  much  lost  in  the  limbs  of  the  tree,  as  in  the  successive 
functionaries  of  the  social  state  —  the  hunters  of  a  race  growing, 
through  their  descendants,  into  transporters,  manufacturers,  and 
scientific  cultivators  of  the  soil,  successively,  and  by  the  process 
of  civilizing  development.  The  native  Briton  —  having  passed, 
by  the  process  of  generation  and  regeneration,  successively,  into 
every  form  of  man  —  now  appears  in  the  aristocracy  of  England  ; 
but  his  correspondent,  in  Australia,  is  still  a  hunter  and  a  savage. 
The  appropriators  of  his  class,  changing  with  the  change  of  times, 
appear  now  in  the  form  of  soldiers,  politicians,  and  annuitants. 
The  primitive  non-producer  preyed  upon  nature ;  and  his  cor 
respondents,  each  in  own  his  way,  now  prey  upon  society  and 
upon  its  industry  —  living  at  the  expense  of  commerce.  The 
rudest  savage  was,  in  his  day,  the  topmost  branch  of  the  shrub  — 
living  upon  plunder ;  and  not  producing  by  his  labor.  The  sol 
dier  of  our  own  day  is,  like  him,  a  privileged  spoliator;  while 
the  politician  lives  by  tribute,  and  the  state  annuitant  derives  his 
whole  support  from  contributions  levied  upon  all  the  classes  who 
contribute  to  the  growth  of  commerce. 

In  relative  position,  therefore,  the  top  branch  is  still  in  place ; 
and  throughout  all  changes  in  the  general  system,  it  always  has 
occupied,  and  always  must  occupy,  a  position  corresponding  to 
the  relation  borne  by  the  appropriators  of  the  race  to  the  social 
toilers. 

The  class  of  transporters,  too,  in  the  scale  of  supremacy,  is 
found  to  be  occupying  its  true  position.  The  ship-owner  and  the 
dealer  in  merchandise  follow  the  politician  in  power  and  rank,  as 
the  carrier  follows  the  hunter  —  both  classes,  in  their  turn,  domi 
nating  over  society,  until  skilled  industry,  and  close  combination 
among  men,  develope  a  people  into  self-government,  and  thus 
abridge  the  powers  of  the  classes  who  occupy  themselves  with 
trade  and  government, 


OP   THE    FORMATION    OF    SOCIETY.  229 

Agriculturists  are  the  last  to  be  developed  into  their  due  effici 
ency  ;  but  here  we  encounter  a  difficulty  resulting  from  defect  of 
language  —  there  being  no  words  properly  expressive  of  the  essen 
tial  difference  between  the  savage,  barbarous,  and  patriarchal,  and 
the  civilized  and  scientific,  culture  of  the  earth.  The  two  differ 
so  widely,  that  they  should  not  be  called  by  the  same  general 
name ;  and  we  but  allude  now  to  the  differences  between  the 
infant,  the  youthful,  and  the  mature  husbandry,  to  account  for 
the  fact  that  unenlightened  tillage  is  overshadowed  by  the  other 
branches  of  human  commerce,  until  the  great  function  of  produc 
tion  of  every  kind  required  for  serving  the  world's  highest  uses  is 
developed  into  the  perfection  to  which  it  is  destined,  and  which  it 
is  bound,  ultimately,  to  attain.  That  done,  and  the  cone  stand 
ing  geometrically  and  socially  adjusted  upon  the  basis  of  science 
— the  harmonies  of  distribution  will  be  complete. 

The  tap-root  deepens,  and  the  branches  grow,  as  the  tree  rises 
in  the  air.  The  imponderable  elements  —  light,  heat,  and  electri 
city —  are  last  among  the  elements  subjected  to  the  control  of 
man,  and  made  to  contribute  to  the  purposes  of  life.  Fire  and 
water,  in  their  natural  forms  and  activities,  are  early  known  ;  but 
it  is  in  an  advanced  stage  of  progress,  only,  that  their  mechanical 
and  chemical  forces  are  brought  under  man's  direction.  Light 
was  somewhat  understood  in  the  age  of  painting,  but  it  is  only 
now  that  it  has  been  made  subservient  to  the  arts  in  photographic 
portraiture ;  electricity  is  used  in  the  transmission  of  news,  and 
in  the  treatment  of  diseases  ;  but,  as  a  motor  power,  or  mechani 
cal  force  —  as  a  substitute  for  human  labor  —  we  are  yet  but  on 
the  threshold  of  discovery.  Agriculture  waits  upon  these,  and 
upon  the  development  of  meteorology,  for  the  command  of  its  own 
proper  sphere  of  service  in  the  life  of  THE  MAN. 

In  the  horse  and  the  man^that  arrangement  of  the  parts  which 
gives  the  greatest  strength  being  the  one  of  the  highest  beauty, 
such  should  likewise  be  the  case  with  those  aggregations  of  men 
which  constitute  societies. 

With  every  step  in  the  direction  that  has  above  been  indicated, 
the  community  acquires  more  perfect  individuality  —  more  com 
plete  power  of  self-government ;  and  the  more  entire  that  power, 
the  greater  is  its  disposition  to  combine  its  efforts  with  those  of 
other  communities  of  the  world  —  and  its  power  to  associate  with 


230  CHAPTER    VIII.    §  12. 

them  on  terms  of  strict  equality.  As  it  is  with  individual  men, 
so  it  is  with  communities.  The  more  perfect  the  individuality  of 
the  man,  the  greater  is  his  disposition  for  association,  and  the 
more  perfect  his  power  to  combine  his  efforts  with  those  of  other 
men  ;  and  here  we  have  further  evidence  of  the  universality  of  the 
laws  which  govern  matter  in  all  its  forms,  from  the  rock  to  the 
sand  and  the  clay  into  which  it  becomes  decomposed ;  and  thence 
upward  through  trees  and  animals,  until  we  reach  communities  of 
men. 

§  12.  In  accordance  with  a  great  mathematical  law,  it  being 
required  that  when  several  forces  unite  to  produce  any  given 
result,  each  be  studied  separately,  and  treated  as  if  no  other  one 
existed,  such  precisely  has  been  the  course  above  adopted.  We 
know  that  man  tends  to  increase  in  numbers,  and  in  his  power 
over  nature,  and  that  each  successive  step  in  his  road  towards 
knowledge  and  power  is  but  preparation  for  a  new  and  greater  one 
— enabling  him  to  obtain  increased  supplies  of  food  and  clothing, 
more  books  and  newspapers,  and  better  shelter,  with  diminished 
muscular  effort.  It  is  seen,  however,  that  despite  this  tendency, 
there  are  various  communities  in  which  numbers  and  wealth  are 
steadily  decreasing ;  while,  among  those  which  are  advancing,  there 
are  no  two  whose  rate  of  progress  is  the  same.  In  some  parts 
of  the  earth,  places  that  once  were  occupied  by  vast  communities 
of  men  are  now  entirely  abandoned ;  while,  in  others,  the  miser 
able  remnant  exists  in  poverty,  wretchedness,  and  slavery,  although 
cultivating  the  same  lands  that  formerly  supplied  food  to  nume 
rous  millions  of  wealthy  and  prosperous  men  —  and  hence  it  has 
been  hastily  concluded  that  it  is  the  natural  tendency  of  communi 
ties  to  pass  through  various  forms  of  existence,  ending  in  phy 
sical  and  moral  death ;  but  such  vis  certainly  not  the  fact. 
There  is  no  natural  reason  why  any  society  should  fail  to  be 
come  more  prosperous  from  year  to  year ;  and  where  such  has 
not  been  the  case,  it  has  been  a  consequence  of  disturbing  causes, 
each  of  which  requires  to  be  studied  separately,  with  a  view  to 
understand  how  far  it  has  tended  to  produce  the  existing  state  of 
things ;  but  preliminary  thereto  it  is  needful  that  we  understand 
what  would  be  the  course  of  things  did  no  such  causes  exist. 
The  physician,  though  not  required  to  treat  the  man  who  is  in 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF   SOCIETY.  231 

the  enjoyment  of  perfect  health,  invariably  commences  his  studies 
by  ascertaining  what  is  the  natural  action  of  the  system  —  having 
done  which,  he  feels  himself  qualified  to  examine  into  the  disturb 
ing  causes  by  which  health  and  life  are  constantly  destroyed. 
Physiology  is  the  necessary  preliminary  to  pathology;  and  this  is 
as  true  of  social  as  it  is  of  physical  science. 

Having  now  completed  the  study  of  the  Physiology  of  society, 
exhibiting  its  progress  towards  a  natural  and  stable  form,  our 
next  succeeding  chapters  will  be  devoted  to  its  Pathology,  with  a  l 
view  to  ascertaining  what  have  been  the  causes  of  the  decline  and 
fall  of  various  communities  that  have  perished  ;  and  why  it  is  the 
rate  of  progress  in  those  now  existing  is  so  widely  different. 

§  13.  The  theory  of  Mr.  Ricardo,  in  regard  to  the  occupation 
of  the  earth,  leads  to  results  directly  the  reverse  of  those  above 
described.  Commencing  the  work  of  cultivation  on  the  richer 
soils — always  those  of  the  valleys — it  follows,  that  as  men  become 
more  numerous,  they  must  disperse  themselves  —  climbing  the 
hills,  or  seeking  elsewhere  valleys  whose  rich  soils  remain  as  yet 
unappropriated.  Dispersion,  bringing  with  it  an  increased  neces 
sity  for  the  services  of  the  soldier,  the  sailor,  and  the  trader,  is 
accompanied  by  constant  increase  in  the  power  of  those  who  have 
appropriated  land  to  demand  payment  for  its  use ;  and  thus  is 
there  produced  a  constant  increase  in  the  proportions",  and  in  the 
importance,  of  the  classes  that  live  by  virtue  of  the  exercise  of  the 
power  of  appropriation.  Qentralization,  therefore,  grows,  and 
its  growth  is  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  diminution  of  the  power  of 
man  to  indulge  his  natural  desire  for  combination  with  his  fellow- 
men  —  and  for  that  development  of  his  faculties  which  fits  him  for 
association  and  enables  him  to  acquire  enlarged  control  over  the 
wonderful  forces  of  nature.  The  many,  in  that  case,  become  from 
year  to  year  more  and  more  the  slaves  of  nature  and  of  their  fel 
low-men — doing,  this,  too  in  virtue  of  what,  if  we  are  to  believe 
Mr.  Ricardo  and  his  successors,  is  a  great  law,  instituted  by  the 
Creator  for  the  government  of  mankind. 

Were  this  so,  society  would  assume  a  form  directly  the  reverse 
of  the  one  here  given  —  that  of  an  inverted  pyramid  —  every  in 
crease  in  numbers  and  wealth  being  marked  by  an  increasing  irre 
gularity  and  instability,  with  corresponding  decline  in  the  condi- . 


232  CHAPTER   Till.    §  13. 

tion  of  man.  "Order"  being,  however,  "Heaven's  first  law," 
it  is  difficult  to  comprehend  how  such  an  one  as  that  announced 
by  Mr.  Ricardo  could  follow  in  its  train  —  and  the  mere  fact  that 
it  would  be  productive  of  such  disorder,  would  seem  to  be  a  suf 
ficient  reason  for  doubting  its  truth,  if  not,  even,  for  causing  it  to 
be  instantly  rejected.  So,  too,  with  that  of  Mr.  Malthus,  which 
leads  inevitably  to  the  subjection  of  the  many  to  the  will  of  the 
few  —  to  centralization  and  slavery.  No  such  law  can,  or  could, 
exist.  The  Creator  established  none  in  virtue  of  which  matter 
was  required  to  take  upon  itself  its  highest  form,  that  of  man,  in 
a  ratio  more  rapid  than  that  in  which  it  tended  to  take  the  lower 
ones,  those  of  potatoes  and  turnips,  herrings  and  oysters,  required 
for  the  sustenance  of  man.  The  great  Architect  of  the  universe 
was  no  blunderer,  such  as  modern  political  economy  would  make 
him.  All  wise,  he  was  not  required  to  institute  different  sets  of 
laws  for  the  government  of  the  same  matter.  All  just,  he  was 
incapable  of  instituting  any  that  could  be  adduced  in  justification 
of  tyranny  and  oppression.  All  merciful,  he  could  make  none 
that  would  afford  a  warrant  for  want  of  mercy  among  men  to 
wards  their  fellow-men,  such  as  is  now  daily  exhibited  in  politico- 
economical  books  of  high  authority.* 

Speaking  of  the  Ricardo  theory,  a  recent  and  eminent  writer 
assures  his  readers  that  that  "  general  law  of  agricultural  industry 
is  the  most  important  proposition  in  political  economy ; ' '  and 
that,  "were  the  law  different,  nearly  all  the  phenomena  of  the 
production  and  consumption  of  wealth  would  be  other  than  they 
are. "  Other,  rather,  than  they  have  been  described  by  political 
economists  as  being,  but  not  "  other  than  they  are."  The  law 
is  different,  and  produces  totally  different  results.  The  supposi 
titious  one  leads  to  the  glorification  of  trade — that  pursuit  of  man 
which  tends  least  to  the  development  of  the  human  intellect,  and 
most  to  the  hardening  of  the  heart  towards  the  sufferings  of  his 

*  Labor  is,  as  we  are  told  by  English  economists,  "  a  commoditity,"  and  if 
men  will,  by  marrying,  indulge  that  natural  desire  which  prompts  them  to  seek 
association  with  their  kind,  and  will  bring  up  children  "to  an  overstocked  and 
expiring  trade,"  it  is  for  them  to  take  the  consequences,  and  "if  we  stand 
between  the  error  and  its  consequences,  we  stand  between  the  evil  and  its  cure  —  if 
we  intercept  the  penalty,  (where  it  does  not  amount  to  positive  death,)  we 
perpetuate  the  sin."  (Edinburgh  Review,  Oct.  1849.  The  italics  are  those 
of  the  reviewer.)  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  elsewhere  stronger  evidence 
of  the  tendency  of  an  unsound  political  economy  to  crush  out  all  Christian 
feeling,  than  is  contained  in  the  above  extract. 


OF   THE   FORMATION  OF   SOCIETY.  233 

fellow-men  ;  while  the  real  one  finds  its  highest  point  in  the  deve 
lopment  of  that  commerce  of  man  with  his  fellow-man  which  tends 
most  to  his  advancement  as  a  moral  and  intellectual  being  —  and 
most  to  the  establishment  of  the  feeling  of  responsibility  to  his  Crea 
tor  for  the  use  he  makes  of  the  faculties  with  which  he  has  been 
endowed,  and  of  the  wealth  he  is  permitted  to  obtain.  The  one  is 
unchristian  in  all  its  parts,  while  the  other  in  its  every  line  is  in 
strict  accordance  with  the  great  law  of  Christianity,  teaching  that 
we  should  do  to  others  as  we  would  that  they  should  do  unto  us 
—  and  with  the  feeling  that  prompts  the  prayer  — 

"  That  mercy  I  to  others  show, 
That  mercy  show  to  me." 


YOL.  I.— 16 


234  CHAPTER  IX.    §  1. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

OF   APPROPRIATION. 

§  1.  IN  the  early  period  of  society,  men  being  poor  and  widely 
scattered,  there  exists  a  necessity  for  being  always  prepared  for  self- 
defence.  Such  was  the  case  with  the  early  settlers  of  these  United 
States ;  and  so  is  it  now  with  those  engaged  in  occupying  the 
Oregon,  Washington,  and  other  territories  of  the  West.  That 
necessity  disappearing,  however,  with  the  growth  of  population, 
and  consequent  increase  in  the  power  of  association,  they  are 
enabled  more  continuously  to  prosecute  their  labors  —  freed  from 
fear  of  seeing  their  fields  ravaged,  their  houses  and  implements 
destroyed,  and  their  wives  and  children  butchered  before  their 
eyes  ;  and  now  it  is  that  production  rapidly  increases,  with  grow 
ing  tendency  to  the  development  of  individuality,  and  to  physical, 
moral,  and  social  progress. 

In  that  period,  too,  the  services  of  the  trader  are  among  the 
necessities  of  life.  Haying  but  little  to  exchange,  the  scattered 
settlers  hail  the  arrival  of  the  travelling  peddler,  who  receives 
from  them  their  surplus  products,  in  exchange  for  shoes  or  blan 
kets,  kettles,  saws,  or  gloves.  Here,  however,  we  mark  a  course 
of  operation  similar  to  that  observed  in  regard  to  preparation  for 
self-defence  —  the  necessity  for  the  services  of  the  soldier  and  the 
trader  diminishing  as  the  makers  of  shoes  and  blankets,  kettles 
and  gloves,  come  to  take  their  places  in  the  settlement ;  and  every 
step  in  the  progress  of  that  diminution  is  seen  to  be  attended  with 
increase  in  the  continuity  of  effort — in  the  development  of  indivi 
dual  faculties — and  in  the  strength  of  the  community  of  which  the 
individuals  are  a  part. 

Diminishing  wants  being  attended  by  diminution  in  the  effort 
required  for  their  satisfaction,  each  successive  step  in  the  direc 
tion  that  has  above  been  indicated,  is  attended  by  diminution  in 
the  proportion  of  the  labors  of  the  community  required  to  be  given 


APPROPRIATION.  235 

to  the  work  of  self-defence,  and  to  that  of  trade  or  transportation ; 
and  the  smaller  the  proportion  thus  required  to  be  given,  the 
larger,  necessarily,  must  be  that  which  may  be  given  to  the 
work  of  cultivation  —  with  constant  increase  in  the  power  of 
combination,  and  in  the  growth  of  commerce.  The  two  neces 
sities  above  described  constituting  the  essential  obstacles  to  the 
gratification  of  the  first  and  greatest  desire  of  man,  the  more 
completely  they  can  be  removed,  the  more  perfect  will  be  his 
security  of  person  and  of  property  —  the  more  productive  will 
become  his  labor — the  less  must  be  the  value  of  all  the  commodi 
ties  required  for  his  consumption  —  and  the  greater  must  be  his 
power  of  accumulating  wealth ;  and  that  such  is  felt  to  be  the 
case  is  obvious  from  the  pleasant  feeling  among  the  members  of  a 
community  whenever,  from  any  cause,  they  are  diminished,  or 
removed ;  and  the  power  of  association  for  peaceful  purposes  is 
increased. 

That  feeling  does  not,  however,  extend  to  those  who  profit  by 
the  exercise  of  power  over  their  fellow-men,  either  as  warriors, 
politicians,  or  traders.  The  soldier — seeking  plunder,  in  quest  of 
which  he  is  always  willing  to  risk  his  life — has,  perhaps,  appro 
priated  large  bodies  of  land,  requiring  slaves  for  their  cultivation  ; 
or  there  are  others  ready  to  purchase  the  captives  he  may  make. 
The  trader,  too,  profiting  by  the  irregularity  of  motion  in  time  of 
war,  buys  men  or  merchandise  when,  and  where,  they  are  cheap  ; 
and  sells  them  when,  and  where,  they  are  dear.  All  seek  to  cen 
tralize  in  their  own  hands  the  control  of  those  by  whom  they  are 
surrounded — the  soldier  monopolizing  the  power  to  collect  taxes ; 
the  great  landholder  monopolizing  the  commodities  yielded  by  the 
labor  of  his  slaves  ;  and  the  trader  desiring  everywhere  to  mono 
polize  the  collection  and  distribution  of  those  commodities  —  that 
he  may  be  enabled  to  dictate  the  prices  at  which  he  will  buy,  and 
those  at  which  he  will  sell.  All  are  middlemen,  standing  in  the 
way  of  association,  and  preventing  any  continuous  motion  between 
those  who  produce  and  those  who  need  to  consume,  and  desire  to 
maintain  commerce  among  themselves. 

The  progress  of  a  community  towards  wealth  and  power  being 
in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  combination  of  action  among  the  people 
of  whom  it  is  composed,  it  follows  that  the  advance  towards  both 
must  be  in  the  ratio  in  which  they  are  enabled  to  dispense  with  the 


236  CHAPTER   IX.    §  2. 

services  of  the  politician,  the  soldier,  the  owner  of  sla^v  es,  and  the 
trader  —  of  that  class  which  lives  by  virtue  of  the  simple  act  of 
appropriation.  Every  movement,  however,  in  that  direction, 
looking  necessarily  to  a  diminution  in  the  power  of  the  latter, 
they  are  all  —  soldier,  trader,  and  politician  —  found,  uniformly, 
banded  together  for  the  subjection  of  the  people  ;  as  was  seen  in 
Athens  and  in  Rome,  and  as  may  now  be  seen  in  all  the  countries 
of  Europe  and  America.  The  history  of  the  world  is  but  a  record 
of  the  efforts  of  the  few  to  tax  the  many,  and  of  those  of  the  many 
to  escape  taxation  ;  and  the  tendency  of  society  to  assume  a  natu 
ral  and  stable  form  is  in  the  precise  ratio  of  the  success  of  this 
latter  class  —  a  success,  however,  slowly  and  tediously  accom 
plished,  because  of  the  power  of  those  who  live  by  appropriation 
to  come  together  in  towns  and  cities,  while  they  who  contribute 
to  their  revenues  are  scattered  throughout  the  country. 

§  2.  The  close  connection  between  war  and  trade  is  seen  in 
every  page  of  history.  The  Ishmaelites,  whose  hand  was  against 
every  man,  while  every  man's  hand  was  against  them,  were  exten 
sive  dealers  in  slaves  and  other  merchandise.  The  Phoenicians, 
Carians,  and  Sidonians — being  freebooters  at  one  time,  or  traders 
at  another,  as  might  best  suit  their  purposes — were  always  ready  for 
any  measures  tending  to  increase  their  monopoly  at  home  by  adding 
to  the  number  of  their  slaves  ;  or  their  monopolies  abroad  by  pre 
venting  others  from  interfering  in  the  trade  which  they,  themselves, 
carried  on  between  distant  men.  The  pages  of  Homer  exhibit  to 
us  Menelaus  boasting  of  his  piracies,  and  of  the  plunder  he  had 
acquired  ;  and  the  sage  Ulysses  as  feeling  his  honor  untouched  by 
the  inquiry,  as  to  whether  he  came  in  the  character  of  trader,  or  of 
pirate. — Turning  next  to  a  somewhat  corresponding  period  in  the 
history  of  modern  Europe,  we  find  the  Norwegian  sea-kings  and 
their  subjects  alternately  engaged  in  "gathering  property,"  as 
robbery  by  sea  and  land  was  naively  termed ;  or  in  carrying  the 
produce  of  one  kingdom  to  another — both  pursuits  being  held  in 
equally  high  esteem.  Later,  the  same  connection  becomes  obvi 
ous  in  the  histories  of  Hawkins,  Drake,  and  Cavendish ;  in  that 
of  the  slave-trade,  from  its  commencement  to  its  close  ;*  in  that 

*  "  There  is  no  nation  in  Europe  which  has  plunged  so  deeply  into  this 
guilt  as  Britain.  We  stopped  the  natural  progress  of  civilization  in  Africa. 


APPROPRIATION.  237 

of  the  Buccaneers  and  the  West  India  colonies ;  in  the  French 
and  English  wars  on  this  continent  —  in  the  West  Indies  —  and 
in  India ;  in  the  closing  of  the  Scheldt ;  in  the  wars  of  Spain  and 
England  ;  in  the  paper  blockades  of  the  wars  of  the  French  Revo 
lution  ;  in  the  occupation  of  Gibraltar  as  a  smuggling  depot  ;*  in 
the  late  wars  of  India,  and  more  particularly  in  the  last  with  Bur- 
inah,  commenced  on  account  of  a  trader's  claim  of  a  few  hundred 
pounds  ;f  in  the  opium  war  of  China ;  in  the  manner  in  which 
Indian  wars  are  gotten  up  in  this  country ;  in  our  own  recent  war- 

We  cut  her  off  from  the  opportunity  of  improvement.  We  kept  her  down  in 
a  state  of  darkness,  bondage,  ignorance,  and  bloodshed.  We  have  there 
subverted  the  whole  order  of  nature ;  we  have  aggravated  every  natural 
barbarity,  and  furnished  to  every  man  motives  for  committing,  under  the 
name  of  trade,  acts  of  perpetual  hostility  and  perfidy  against  his  neighbor. 
Thus  had  the  perversion  of  British  commerce  carried  misery  instead  of  hap 
piness  to  one  whole  quarter  of  the  globe.  False  to  the  very  principles  of 
trade,  unmindful  of  our  duty,  what  almost  irreparable  mischief  had  we  done 
to  that  continent !  We  had  obtained  as  yet  only  so  much  knowledge  of  its 
productions  as  to  show  that  there  was  a  capacity  for  trade  which  we  checked." 
—  W .  Pitt. 

*  "  Gibraltar  was  all  that  England  did  get  out  of  that  war,  and  as  this 
robbery  went  a  great  way  to  ensure  her  discomfiture,  and  to  establish  Philip 
the  Fifth  upon  the  throne,  we  may  consider  Gibraltar  as  the  cause  of  the 
first  of  those  ruinous  wars  which,  made  without  due  authority,  and  carried 
on  by  anticipations  of  revenue,  have  introduced  among  us  those  social  dis 
eases  which  have  counterbalanced  and  perverted  the  mechanical  advance 
ment  of  modern  times. — Gibraltar  was  confirmed  to  us  at  the  treaty  of 
Utrecht,  but  without  any  jurisdiction  attached  to  it,  and  upon  the  condition 
that  no  smuggling  should  be  carried  on  thence  into  Spain.  These  conditions 
we  daily  violate.  We  exercise  jurisdiction  by  cannon-shot  in  the  Spanish 
waters,  (for  the  bay  is  all  Spanish.)  Under  our  batteries,  the  smuggler 
runs  for  protection;  he  ships  his  bales  at  our  quays;  he  is  either  the  agent 
of  our  merchants,  or  is  insured  by  them ;  and  the  flag-post  at  the  top  of  the 
rock  is  used  to  signal  to  him  the  movements  of  the  Spanish  cruisers." — UBQU- 
HART  :  Pillars  of  Hercules,  vol.  i.  p.  43. 

•j-  Two  British  subjects  belonging  to  the  barque  Monarch  had  a  dispute  at 
Rangoon,  which  resulted  in  the  captain  of  the  ship  being  mulcted  in  the  sum 
of  £101.  Two  others,  likewise  British  subjects,  belonging  to  the  ship  Cham 
pion,  had  also  a  dispute  at  the  same  place,  which  resulted  in  one  of  them 
being  required  to  pay  £70 ;  and  out  of  these  transactions  grew,  in  a  few 
weeks,  the  Burmese  war,  in  which  many  thousands  of  lives  were  sacrificed, 
while  towns  and  cities  were  plundered ;  and  which,  itself,  resulted  in  the  annex 
ation  to  the  British  Empire  of  a  territory  larger  than  England.  Those  who 
desire  to  understand  how  war. and  trade  feed  each  other,  can  obtain  the 
desired  information  by  reading  Mr.  Cobden's  pamphlet,  entitled  "  How  Wars 
are  got  up  in  India:"  London,  1853.  It  will  there  be  seen  that,  as  elsewhere 
in  the  East,  the  fable  of  the  wolf  and  the  lamb  was  fully  acted  out;  war  hav 
ing  been  forced  on  the  Burmese,  who  evinced  throughout  the  strongest  desire 
to  do  entire  justice.  The  crime,  however,  brings  with  it  its  punishment,  Bur- 
mah  being  a  heavy  charge  on  the  Indian  treasury,  as  are  "Scinde,  Sattarah, 
and  the  Punjaub,  annexed,"  says  Mr.  Cobdcn,  "at  the  cost  of  so  many 
crimes." 


238  CHAPTER   IX.    §  2. 

like  demonstration  against  Japan,  with  a  view  to  compel  that 
country  to  accept  of  the  blessings  that  were  to  follow  in  the  wake 
of  trade ;  in  the  proceedings  of  France  at  the  Sandwich  Islands, 
and  among  those  of  the  Marquesas  group  ;  and  last,  though  not 
least,  in  the  maintenance  of  war  against  private  property  on  the 
ocean,  as  exhibited  in  the  recent  capture,  in  the  Baltic  and  Black 
seas,  of  so  many  defenceless  ships,  owned  by  men  who  had  no 
concern  in  the  war,  except  that  which  arose  out  of  the  fact  that 
they  had  found  themselves  compelled  to  pay  taxes  for  its  main 
tenance. 

War  and  trade,  seeking  always  a  monopoly  of  power,  and 
requiring  fleets  and  armies,  tend  invariably  towards  centralization. 
The  support  of  soldiers  and  sailors,  generals  and  admirals,  pro 
duces  a  necessity  for  taxation,  the  proceeds  of  which  must  seek  a 
central  point  before  they  can  be  again  distributed  —  and  the  dis 
tribution  brings  together,  necessarily,  hosts  of  men  —  waiters  on 
Providence  —  anxious  to  secure  their  share ;  as  is  seen  to  have 
been  the  case  in  Athens  and  in  Rome ;  and  as  is  now  so  obvious 
in  Paris  and  London,  Xew  York  and  Washington.  The  city, 
growing,  becomes,  from  year  to  year,  more  and  more  a  place  in 
which  trade  in  merchandise,  or  trade  in  principles,  may  advan 
tageously  be  carried  on ;  and  the  larger  the  city,  the  more 
rapidly  increasing  is  the  tendency  towards  augmented  centraliza 
tion  —  every  increase  of  taxation  tending  to  diminish  the  power 
of  healthful  association  throughout  the  tax-paying  districts,  and 
to  increase  the  unhealthy  movement  in  the  tax-receiving  capital. 

With  every  such  increase  of  central  attraction,  society  tends  to 
take  upon  itself  a  form  directly  the  reverse  of  the  natural  one  — 
assuming  more  and  more  that  of  an  inverted  pyramid  ;  and  hence 
it  is  that  in  every  community  which  has  depended  upon  its  powers 
of  appropriation,  in  place  of  those  of  production  —  in  every  one 
that  has  diminished  the  rapidity  of  motion  among  its  own  people, 
while  engaged  in  the  effort  to  diminish  that  existing  among  those 
of  its  neighbors  —  there  has  been  seen  to  arrive  a  period  of  splen 
dor  and  apparent  strength,  but  real  weakness,  followed  by  decline, 
even  when  not  by  death.  While  enriching  the  few,  centralization 
impoverishes  the  many ;  and  while  enabling  the  former  to  build 
palaces  and  temples — to  open  parks,  maintain  armies,  and  almost 
to  re-create  cities — it  drives  the  latter  to  seek  refuge  in  the  meanest 


APPROPRIATION.  239 

hovels,  and  thus  creates  a  population  always  ready  to  sell  their 
services  to  the  highest  bidder,  at  any  sacrifice  of  conscience. 
With  every  step  in  this  direction,  the  societary  machine  becomes 
less  stable  and  secure  —  and  with  each  it  tends  more  and  more  to 
topple  over,  until  at  length  it  falls,  burying  in  its  ruins  those  who 
had  hoped  most  to  profit  by  the  state  of  things  they  had  labored 
to  produce.  So  has  it  been,  even  in  our  own  day,  in  the  cases  of 
Napoleon  and  Louis  Philippe ;  who  were,  however,  but  types  of 
their  class  —  that  class  which  profits  by  the  exercise  of  power 
over  their  fellow-men,  and  seeks  distinction  in  the  characters  of 
warriors,  politicians,  or  traders. 

The  more  perfect  the  power  of  association  —  the  higher  the 
organization  of  society,  and  the  more  complete  the  development 
of  individuality  among  its  members  —  the  more  do  all  such  men 
tend  to  occupy  their  natural  place,  that  of  instruments  to  be  used 
ly  society  ;  and  the  more  does  society  itself  tend  to  take  its  natu 
ral  form,  with  hourly  increase  in  the  power  of  resistance  to  any 
invasion  of  its  rights,  and  in  the  capacity  for  durability.  What 
ever  tends  to  diminish  the  power  of  association,  and  to  prevent 
the  development  of  individuality,  produces  the  reverse  effect  of 
making  society  the  instruments  of  these  men — centralization,  sla 
very,  and  death  travelling  always  hand  in  hand  together,  whether 
in  the  moral  or  material  world.  * 

*  The  entire  identity  of  the  views  of  the  trader  and  the  slave-owner  is 
exhibited  in  the  following  passages  from  recent  journals: 

"An  inexhaustible  supply  of  cheap  labor  has  so  long  been  a  condition  of  our 
social  system,  whether  in  town  or  country,  whether  for  work  or  for  pleasure, 
that  it  remains  to  be  seen  whether  a  great  enhancement  of  labor  would  not 
disturb  our  industrial,  and  even  our  political,  arrangements  to  a  serious  ex 
tent.  Two  men  have  been  after  one  master  so  long,  that  we  are  not  prepared  for 
the  day  when  two  masters  will  be  after  one  man ;  for  it  is  not  certain  either  that 
the  masters  can  carry  on  their  business,  or  that  the  men  will  comport  them 
selves  properly  under  the  new  regime.  Commercial  enterprise  and  social 
development  require  an  actually  increasing  population,  and  also  that  the  in 
crease  shall  be  in  the  most  serviceable  —  that  is,  the  laborious  —  part  of  the 
population,  for  otherwise  it  will  not  be  sufficiently  at  the  command  of  capital  and 
skill." — London  Times. 

"  Cheapness  of  labor  is  essential  to  the  material  progress  of  every  people. 
But  this  can  only  obtain  with  the  abundance  of  supply.  Now,  slave  labor  is, 
and  ought  to  be,  the  cheapest  kind  of  labor.  It  will  only  become  otherwise 
when  foreign  and  hostile  influences  are  made  to  bear  against  it.  The  aboli 
tion  of  the  slave-trade,  by  cutting  off  the  supply,  tends  to  this  result.  Slaves 
were  never  before  so  high  in  the  South.  #  #  *  Slavery  is,  and 
so  long  as  the  South  preserves  her  existence  must  continue  to  be,  the  basis 
of  all  property  values  in  the  South.  *  *  *  Increase  the  supply 
of  labor,  and  thus  cheapen  the  cost  of  slaves,  and  the  South  will  escape  im- 


240  CHAPTER  IX.    §  3. 

To  the  fact  that  the  policy  of  Athens,  of  Rome,  and  of  other 
communities  of  ancient  and  modern  times,  tended  directly  to  the 
production  of  this  latter  state  of  things,  it  is  due  that  there  has 
been,  in  many  of  them,  seen  to  arise  a  state  of  things  giving 
colour  to  the  idea  that  societies,  like  trees  and  men,  have  their 
various  stages  of  growth  and  of  decline  —  ending,  naturally  and 
necessarily,  in  death.  How  far  this  is  so,  the  reader  will  perhaps 
be  prepared  to  decide  after  a  brief  examination  of  the  course  of 
action  pursued  by  some  of  the  leading  communities  of  the  world. 

§  3.  In  the  early  period  of  Grecian  history,  we  find  the  people 
of  Attica  divided  into  several  small  and  independent  communities 
— but  becoming  at  length  united  under  Theseus  ;  when  ATHENS 
became  the  capital  of  the  kingdom.  The  communities  of  Bceotia 
in  like  manner  associated  themselves  with  Thebes  ;  and  the  seve 
ral  little  states  of  Phocis  united  in  following  their  example.  The 
tendency  to  combination  thus  exhibited  in  the  various  states  was 
early  shown  in  relation  to  the  affairs  of  Greece  at  large  —  in  the 

minent  peril.  The  number  of  slave-owners  would  multiply,  the  direct  interest  in 
Us  preservation  would  be  more  universally  diffused,  and  that  great  necessity  of  the 
South  —  union  in  defence  of  slavery  —  more  readily  accomplished.  If  it  were 
possible,  every  man  in  her  limits  should  be  a  slave-owner." — Charleston  Mer 
cury. 

"The  great  works  of  this  country  depend  upon  cheap  labor." — Lon.  Times. 

"  Slavery  is  the  corner-stone  of  our  institutions." — McDuffie. 

"  The  whole  question  has  become  one  of  a  cheap  and  abundant  supply  of  labor. 
The  operation  of  the  repeal  of  the  corn  laws  was,  first,  to 
equalize,  or  approximate,  the  wages  here  and  on  the  continent ;  and,  secondly, 
not,  indeed,  to  lower  them  here  at  once,  but  to  make  it  possible  to  lower  them, 
if  at  any  future  time  the  relation  between  demand  and  supply  in  the  labor- 
market  should  render  such  reduction  just  and  necessary.  *  *  * 
For  half  a  century  back,  the  western  shores  of  our  island  have  been  flooded 
with  crowds  of  half-clad,  half-fed,  half-civilized  Celts,  reducing  the  standard 
of  living  and  comfort  among  our  people  by  their  example,  swelling  the  regis 
ters  of  crimes,  to  the  great  damage  of  the  national  character  and  reputation ;" 
but,  as  the  writer  continues,  "the  abundant  supply  of  cheap  labor  which  they 
furnished  had  no  doubt  the  effect  of  enabling  our  manufacturing  industry  to 
increase  at  a  rate,  and  to  reach  a  height,  which,  without  them,  would  have 
been  unattainable ;  and  so  far  they  have  been  of  service." — North  British  He- 
view,  Nov.  1852. 

"  As  long  as  the  larger  proportion  of  women  are  incompetent  or  unwilling 
to  earn  anything  except  by  plain  sewing,  it  is  as  idle  to  abuse  the  order  of 
Davises  for  the  misery  of  his  operatives,  as  it  would  be  to  abuse  Providence 
for  bringing  them  into  the  world  with  appetites.  It  would  be  better  for  all  of 
them,  in  the  long  run,  to  reduce  wages  to  the  famine  point,  so  as  to  force  all  who 
had  sufficient  strength  into  other  employments.  This  at  least  would  diminish 
competition,  and  give  the  remaining  ones  a  better  chance." — New  York 
Evening  Post. 


APPROPEI ATION.  241 

institution  of  the  Amphictyonic  league,  the  Olympic  and  other 
games. 

During  a  long  period,  the  history  of  Athens  appears  almost  a 
blank,  because  of  its  peaceful  and  quiet  progress.  With  its  im 
mediate  neighbors  it  had  occasional  disputes,  but,  the  tendency 
towards  union  being  great,  peace  was  "the  habitual  and  regular 
condition  of  their  mutual  intercourse."  Peace  brought  with  it  so 
steady  a  growth  of  population  and  of  wealth,  that,  long  prior  to 
the  days  of  Solon,  the  men  engaged  in  trade  and  in  the  mechanic 
arts  constituted  an  affluent  and  intelligent  body ;  while  every 
where  throughout  the  state,  labor  and  skill  were  being  given  to  the 
development  of  the  hidden  treasures  of  the  earth.  The  power  to 
associate  and  the  habit  of  association  grew  steadily,  with  con 
stant  increase  of  that  individuality  to  which  Athens  stands 
indebted  for  her  prominent  position  in  the  history  of  man. 

Under  the  legislation  of  Solon,  the  whole  body  of  the  citizens 
exercised  the  right  of  voting  in  the  popular  assemblies  —  but  all 
were  not  equally  eligible  for  filling  the  offices  of  state.  On  the 
other  hand,  all  were  not  equally  liable  to  taxation  for  the  main 
tenance  of  government  —  the  heaviest  contributions  being  re 
quired  of  the  first  class,  eligible  to  the  highest  offices  ;  and  their 
amount  diminishing  in  passing  downward,  until  they  finally  dis 
appeared  on  reaching  the  fourth,  which  was  exempt  from  taxa 
tion,  as  it  was  excluded  from  the  magistracy ;  and  here  we  find 
the  most  equal  apportionment  of  rights  and  duties  exhibited  in 
the  history  of  the  world.  Elsewhere,  the  few  have  monopolized 
the  offices,  while  taxing  the  many  for  their  support ;  whereas, 
here,  the  few  who  enjoyed  the  offices  paid  the  taxes,  and  the 
many  who  were  excluded  from  the  former,  found  themselves 
wholly  relieved  from  the  payment  of  the  latter. 

The  century  succeeding  the  organization  thus  effected,  exhibits 
Attica,  in  the  general  enjoyment  of  peace,  gradually  increasing 
in  both  wealth  and  population.  Towards  its  close,  we  find  the 
state  to  have  been  divided  into  a  hundred  townships,  each  hav 
ing  its  local  assembly,  and  its  magistracy  for  the  regulation  of  its 
own  local  affairs ;  and  thus  was  constituted  a  system  more  per 
fectly  in  accordance  with  the  great  physical  laws  to  which  refer 
ence  has  heretofore  been  made,  than  any  the  world  had  seen,  prior 
to  the  settlement  of  the  provinces  now  constituting  the  United 


242  CHAPTER  IX.    §3. 

States.  The  beneficial  effect  of  peace  was,  at  this  time,  still  fur 
ther  exhibited  in  the  fact,  that  the  constituency  was  enlarged,  by 
the  enfranchisement  of  numerous  slaves,  and  by  the  admission  of 
many  aliens  to  the  rights  of  citizenship. 

With  the  Persian  invasion,  terminating  in  the  battle  of  Mara 
thon,  and  with  the  subsequent  occupation  of  Attica  by  the  troops 
of  Xerxes,  there  came,  however,  a  total  change.  Fields  had 
been  wasted,  houses,  cattle,  and  machinery  of  cultivation  had 
been  destroyed,  and  population  had  largely  diminished ;  and 
henceforth  we  find  the  Athenians  passing  from  the  condition  of  a 
peaceful  democracy,  in  which  every  man  was  engaged  in  combin 
ing  his  efforts  with  his  fellow-citizens  at  home,  to  that  of  a  war 
like  aristocracy,  engaged  in  preventing  the  existence  of  associa 
tion  abroad  —  and  using  their  power  of  disturbance  as  a  means 
of  enriching  themselves.  Having  accumulated  fortunes  by  means 
of  extortion  and  robbery,  Themistocles  and  Cimon  were  enabled 
to  secure  the  services  of  thousands  of  poor  dependants  who  ex 
hibited  themselves  in  the  streets,  gladly  following  in  the  train  of 
the  men  whom  war  had  rendered  now  their  masters.  Poverty 
produced  a  thirst  for  plunder,  the  hope  of  which  rendered  it  easy 
to  fill  the  army  and  to  man  the  ships ;  and  next  the  army  and  the 
fleet  were  employed  in  reducing  to  subjection  states  and  cities  that 
had  been  regarded,  hitherto,  as  equals  and  allies.  One  by  one 
they  fell,  and  the  plunder  thus  acquired  stimulated  the  desire  for 
fresh  supplies,  with  constantly  increasing  power  to  gratify  the 
appetite.  Athens  had  now  become  mistress  of  the  seas,  and  no 
state,  as  we  are  told  by  Xenophon,  could  be  permitted  to  have 
commerce  with  distant  people,  unless  profoundly  submissive  to 
her  commands.  "Upon  her  will  depends,"  as  he  continues, 
"the  exportation  of  the  surplus  produce  of  all  nations  ;"  and  to 
enable  her  to  exercise  that  will  wholly  unrestrained,  we  find  her 
next  persuading,  or  compelling,  the  allies  to  compound  for  per 
sonal  service  by  money  payments,  by  help  of  which  nearly  the 
whole  Athenian  people  were  maintained  in  the  service  of  the 
state. 

War  having  now  become  the  trade  of  Athens,  her  armies  are 
everywhere  seen  —  in  Egypt  and  in  the  Peloponnesus,  at  Megara 
and  at  (Egina  —  and  to  enable  her  to  support  these  armies,  she 
seizes  upon  the  public  treasury,  which  is  transferred  to  the  great 


APPROPRIATION.  .  243 

central  city.  Next,  we  find  an  increase  in  the  tribute  required 
of  the  allies,  who  are  required  to  pay  taxes  upon  all  goods  im 
ported,  and  all  exported ;  the  collection  of  which  is  farmed  by 
men  who  find  in  every  stoppage  of  the  societary  motion  the 
means  of  adding  to  their  fortunes.  Further,  Athens  declares  her 
self  the  court  of  final  resort  in  all  criminal  cases,  and  in  nearly  all 
civil  ones  ;  and  now,  the  city  being  thronged  with  applicants  for 
justice,  its  people  are  converted  into  judges,  all  ready  to  sell  their 
awards  to  the  highest  bidder.  The  states  themselves  now  find  it 
necessary  to  employ  agents  within  the  city,  and  to  distribute 
bribes,  by  help  of  which  to  purchase  protection  against  the  de 
mands  of  the  sovereign  state. 

With  every  step  in  this  direction,  the  few  become  enriched, 
while  the  many  become  more  and  more  impoverished.  Temples  are 
erected,  and  the  splendor  of  the  city  increases  from  day  to  day. 
Theatres  are  built,  in  which  the  Athenians  may  gratuitously  in 
dulge  their  tastes ;  but  the  right  thus  to  live  by  the  labor  of 
others  being  now  regarded  as  a  privilege  whose  enjoyment  should 
be  limited  to  the  few,  inquiry  is  made  into  the  claim  for  citizen 
ship — resulting  in  the  rejection  of  no  less  than  five  thousand  per 
sons,  all  of  whom  are  sold  as  slaves.  With  every  increase  of 
splendor  we  find  an  increase  of  indigence,  and  an  increased  neces 
sity  for  exporting  a  portion  of  the  people  to  take  possession  of 
distant  lands — there  to  exercise  upon  the  earlier  settlers  the 
same  power  the  rich  have  learned  to  exercise  at  home.  The 
people  —  their  time  being  now  fully  occupied  in  the  management 
of  public  affairs  —  next  require  that  they  should  be  paid  out  of 
the  public  purse ;  and  so  great  has  become  the  general  poverty 
that  an  obolus  —  a  piece  of  three  cents'  value  —  as  compensation 
for  the  day's  service  in  the  courts,  has  become  an  object  of 
desire. 

Tyranny  and  rapacity  —  everywhere  exhibited,  and  producing 
everywhere  a  decline  of  commerce  between  man  and  man,  and 
between  state  and  state — next  give  rise  to  the  Peloponnesian 
war,  closing  with  the  passage  of  Attica  under  the  dominion  of 
the  Thirty  Tyrants.  Private  property  is  now  to  a  vast  extent 
confiscated  to  the  public  use ;  and  to  secure  the  services  of  the 
poor  in  the  spoliation  of  the  rich,  the  wages  of  attendance  at  pub 
lic  meetings  are  trebled  in  amount.  Taxation  grows,  and  with 


244  CHAPTER  IX.    §3. 

its  growth  the  inducements  to  honest  exertion  as  steadily  decline. 
Population  becomes,  to  use  the  modern  phrase,  superabundant ; 
and  as  man  diminishes  in  value,  we  mark  a  growing  thirst  for  plun 
der,  and  an  increased  facility  in  obtaining  troops  by  help  of  whom 
it  may  be  secured.  Licentiousness  and  dissipation  become  univer 
sal,  and  towns  and  cities  are  everywhere  plundered  by  mercenaries, 
always  ready  to  sell  their  services  to  the  highest  bidder.  Mili 
tary  command  is  courted  as  the  only  road  to  fortune,  and  the  for 
tunes  thus  acquired  are  expended  in  bribing  the  people  to  secure 
their  votes. — New  oppressions  next  produce  the  Social  War, 
carried  on — as  had  been  that  of  the  Peloponnesus  —  by  extermi 
nating  the  males,  selling  the  women  and  children  as  slaves,  and 
confiscating  all  their  property  ;  and  thus  on  and  on  may  we  trace 
the  people  of  Attica,  exhausting  themselves  in  the  effort  to  impede 
the  movement  of  others  —  until,  at  length,  they  find  themselves 
mere  instruments  in  the  hands  of  Philip  of  Macedon,  from  whom 
they  pass,  successively,  to  Alexander  and  his  lieutenants. 

The  object  of  the  Athenians,  from  the  date  of  the  Persian 
wars,  is  everywhere  seen  to  have  been  that  of  obtaining  a  mono 
poly  of  power,  and  a  monopoly  of  trade  as  a  means  of  securing 
the  enjoyment  of  power.  The  more  the  city  and  its  port  could 
be  rendered  the  emporium,  the  greater  would  be  its  ability  to 
control  the  action  of  those  dependent  upon  it  as  a  place  in  which 
their  exchanges  might  be  made.  Not  only,  therefore,  were  those 
with  whom  they  were  at  war  driven  from  the  ocean,  but  neutral 
vessels  were  constantly  seized  and  detained  in  defiance  of  law ; 
and  it  was  with  great  difficulty  that  ships,  or  goods,  so  detained, 
were  ever  extricated  from  their  captors'  hands.  In  reading 
the  history  of  the  proceedings  of  the  "  Mistress  of  the  Seas"  of 
that  day,  and  of  her  prize  courts,  it  is  difficult  to  avoid  being 
struck  with  the  resemblance  between  them  and  those  of  recent 
days,  when  the  seas  were  swept  of  neutrals  by  help  of  ' '  the  Rule 
of  '56,"  paper  blockades,  and  "Orders  in  Council."  With 
every  step  in  that  direction,  there  became  developed  a  greater 
tendency  towards  embargoes,  and  prohibitions  of  intercourse ; 
to  one  of  which  latter  was,  in  no  slight  degree,  due  the 
Peloponnesian  war.  All  these  measures  tended  to  diminish 
the  movement  of  society  abroad ;  but  equally  to  produce  a 
diminution  in  the  power  of  voluntary  association  at  home; 


APPROPRIATION.  245 

and  that  diminution  went  on  increasing  from  year  to  year,  until 
the  once  proud  republic  —  having  first  passed  through  the  hands 
of  Macedonian  kings  and  Roman  proconsuls — is  seen  to  be  repre 
sented  by  troops  of  slaves ;  while  Atticus  remains  almost  sole 
owner,  and  sole  improver,  in  the  land  that,  in  earlier  and  happier 
days,  had  given  food  and  raiment,  prosperity  and  happiness,  to 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  industrious  freemen. 

§  4.  Commencing,  necessarily,  the  work  of  cultivation  on  the 
poorest  soils,  SPARTA  never  went  beyond  them  ;  and  for  the  reason 
that  her  institutions  were  based  upon  the  idea  of  preventing  all 
voluntary  association,  and  discouraging  commerce,  in  all  and  every 
form.  Man  was  there  regarded  in  no  other  light  than  that  of  a 
machine,  or  instrument,  forming  a  component  part  of  an  imagi 
nary  being  called  The  State  ;  to  the  gratification  of  whose  pride, 
rancor,  or  revenge,  all  his  feelings  and  affections  required  to  be 
sacrificed.  Failing  to  marry,  he  was  liable  to  be  punished  ;  but 
when  married,  the  intercourse  between  himself  and  his  wife  was 
rendered  difficult,  in  hopes  thereby  to  stimulate  the  sexual  appetite, 
and  thus  promote  the  growth  of  population.  Children  being  the 
property  of  the  State,  the  parents  could  exercise  no  control  what 
ever  over  their  education,  whether  physical,  moral,  or  intellectual. 
The  home  had  no  existence,  for  not  only  were  parents  deprived 
of  the  society  of  their  children,  but  they  might  not  even  eat  in 
private.  Her  people  could  neither  buy  nor  sell ;  nor  might  they 
in  any  mariner  whatever  avail  themselves  of  the  services  of  those 
most  useful  metals,  gold  and  silver.  They  might  not  study  the 
sciences,  nor  might  they  indulge  their  tastes  for  music ;  while 
from  all  descriptions  of  theatrical  amusement  they  were  entirely 
debarred.  The  tendency  of  the  system  being  thus  adverse  to  the 
development  of  the  individual  faculties,  wealth  could  not  grow, 
nor  could  they,  themselves,  advance  beyond  the  earliest  and 
rudest  pursuits  —  those  looking  to  the  appropriation  of  the  pro 
perty  of  others  ;  and  therefore  it  was  that,  while  always  engaged 
in  war,  they  proved  themselves  ever  ready  to  sell  themselves  to 
the  highest  bidder.  Poor  and  rapacious,  perfidious  and  tyran 
nical,  the  history  of  Sparta  is  but  a  long  record  of  growing  ine 
quality  and  constantly  retarded  motion  of  society  —  until  at 
length  we  find  her  soil  passing  under  the  control  of  a  few  pro- 


246  CHAPTER   IX.     §  6. 

prietors,  surrounded  by  hosts  of  slaves  ;  preparatory  to  her  pas 
sage  out  of  existence  —  leaving,  as  her  sole  bequest  to  posterity, 
the  record  of  her  avarice  and  her  crimes. 

§  5.  The  history  of  CARTHAGE  is  little  more  than  a  record  of 
wars  made  for  the  purpose  of  monopolizing  trade,  and  of  which 
Corsica  and  Sardinia,  Sicily  and  Spain,  were  the  most  important 
theatres.  Colonies  were  to  be  secured,  that  they  might  be  de 
prived  of  all  intercourse  with  the  world,  except  through  the 
medium  of  Carthaginian  ships  and  merchants ;  and  the  contri 
butions  of  the  colonists  furnished  to  the  central  treasury  means 
for  the  extension  of  the  system  under  which  they  suffered.  Else 
where,  where  colonies  could  not  be  established,  all  the  movements 
of  the  trader  were  shrouded  in  the  strictest  secresy  —  monopoly 
being  the  object ;  and  means  the  most  unscrupulous  being  every 
where  resorted  to,  for  securing  that  it  should  be  maintained. 
Tolerating  no  rivals,  they  guarded,  as  state  secrets,  everything 
connected  with  the  caravan  trade  —  while  ever  ready  to  license 
pirates  who  desired  to  seize  their  neighbors'  ships.  Monopolies 
filled  the  treasury,  the  disposal  of  whose  revenues  gave  power  to 
an  aristocracy  with  whom  trade  was  the  first  and  most  important 
object ;  and  to  secure  themselves  in  the  exercise  of  power,  they 
subsidized  barbarians  of  all  the  countries  from  the  southern 
Sahara  to  the  northern  Gaul.  The  splendor  of  the  city  greatly 
increased ;  but,  as  usual  in  all  such  cases  —  the  real  weakness 
existing  in  the  ratio  of  the  show  of  apparent  strength  —  the  day 
of  trial  proved  that  the  foundation  of  the  social  edifice  had  been 
laid  upon  "gold  dust  and  sand,"  and  not  upon  a  rock;  and 
Carthage  passed  from  existence,  leaving  behind  nothing  but  the 
further  proof  afforded  by  its  history,  of  the  truth  of  the  propo 
sition,  that  "those  who  live  by  the  sword  must  die  by  the 
sword." 

§  6.  In  the  days  of  Numa  and  of  Servius,  the  people  of  ROME  cul 
tivated  the  fertile  soils,  and  the  Campagna  was  filled  with  cities, 
having  each  an  independent  existence — and  constituting,  each,  a 
local  centre  towards  which  gravitated  the  people  of  the  surround 
ing  country.  Under  their  successors,  the  Tarquins,  we  find  a 
change,  and  from  that  time  forward,  until  we  reach  the  downfall 


APPROPRIATION.  24T 

of  the  empire,  the  energies  of  Rome  are  seen  to  have  been  un 
ceasingly  devoted  to  the  prevention  of  all  peaceful  association 
among  her  neighbors — towards  appropriation  of  their  property — 
and  towards  the  centralization  of  all  power  within  her  walls. 
The  city  grew  in  splendor,  but  with  that  growth  there  came  a 
corresponding  decline  in  the  condition  of  her  people,  until,  at 
length,  we  find  them  reduced  to  pauperism,  and  dependent  upon 
daily  distributions  of  bread — the  contribution  of  distant  provinces 
taxed  for  their  support ;  and  thus  is  the  history  of  Rome  but  a 
repetition,  upon  a  grander  scale,  of  that  of  Athens.  Palaces 
rise  within  and  without  the  city,  but  with  every  step  in  this 
direction  we  see  a  diminution  in  the  power  of  voluntary  associa 
tion  among  its  people.  The  land  that  formerly  gave  support  to 
thousands  of  small  proprietors  is  next  abandoned,  or,  when  cul 
tivated  at  all,  is  tilled  by  slaves  ;  and  the  more  enslaved  the  peo 
ple  of  the  country,  the  greater  becomes  the  necessity  for  public 
distributions  in  the  city  —  towards  which  flock  all  who  seek  to 
live  by  means  of  plunder.  Panem  ef,  circenses  —  free  bread  and 
free  exhibitions  of  gladiatorial  and  other  brutal  fights  —  consti 
tute  now  the  sole  bill  of  rights  of  the  degraded  populace.  From 
age  to  age  the  city  grows,  with  corresponding  decline  in  the 
motion  of  society  constituting  commerce.  Depopulation  and 
poverty  spread  from  Italy  to  Sicily  and  Greece — to  hither  and 
further  Gaul — to  Asia  and  to  Africa ;  until,  at  length,  decayed 
at  the  heart,  the  empire  passes  away,  having  existed  for  almost 
a  thousand  years,  a  model  of  rapacity,  dishonesty,  and  fraud ; 
and  having,  in  the  whole  period,  produced  scarcely  a  dozen  men 
whose  names  have  descended  to  posterity  with  an  untarnished 
fame. 

Traders,  gladiators,  and  buffoons  were  regarded  by  the  Romans 
as  belonging  to  the  self-same  class,  and  yet  the  Roman  history  is 
but  a  record  of  traders'  operations  on  the  largest  scale.  For 
centuries  following  the  expulsion  of  the  Tarquins,  and  the  esta 
blishment  of  aristocratic  power,  we  witness  a  perpetual  war  be 
tween  plebeian  debtors  —  impoverished  by  means  of  the  constant 
wresting  of  the  law  to  the  purposes  of  the  rich  and  noble  — 
and  their  patrician  creditors,  proprietors  of  private  dungeons,  in 
which  they  incarcerated  the  men  whose  only  crime  consisted  in 
an  inability  to  pay  their  debts.  Later,  we  find  the  city  filled 


248  CHAPTER  IX.    §  7. 

with  knights,  accustomed  to  place  themselves  as  middlemen 
between  those  who  had  taxes  to  pay  and  revenue  to  receive,  pur 
chasing  the  right  of  taxation  at  the  cheapest  price,  and  selling  it 
at  the  dearest  one  —  paying  to  the  receiver  the  smallest  sum,  and 
collecting  from  the  poor  tax-payer  the  largest  one.  Scipio  traded 
his  conscience  for  plunder  of  the  treasury,  and  when  requested  to 
produce  his  accounts,  adjourned  the  meeting  to  the  temple,  there 
to  return  thanks  to  the  gods  for  the  victories  by  help  of  which  he 
had  been  enriched.*  Yerres,  in  Sicily,  and  Fonteius,  in  Gaul, 
were  but  traders.  Brutus  lent  money  at  four  per  cent,  per 
month,  and  Caesar  would  probably  have  paid  at  a  higher  rate 
than  even  this  for  the  millions  he  had  borrowed,  had  he  succeeded 
in  placing  himself  on  an  imperial  throne.  All  dealt  in  slaves, 
the  products  of  whose  labors  they  monopolized,  while  treating  in 
the  harshest  manner  the  unfortunate  people  subjected  to  their  power. 

§  7.  Turning  now  to  VENICE,  we  witness  a  perpetual  succes 
sion  of  wars  for  trade,  with  constant  tendency  to  the  centraliza 
tion  of  power  in  the  hands  of  the  few  whom  the  chances  of  birth, 
or  fortune,  had  placed  in  the  direction  of  the  state.  Originally 
democratic,  we  find  its  government  becoming  with  each  succeed 
ing  age  more  aristocratic,  until  at  length  we  reach  the  closing  of 
the  grand  council  against  all  who  had  not  already  places  there,  f 
That,  in  its  turn,  was  followed  by  the  establishment  of  the  cele 
brated  Council  of  Ten,  whose  spies  penetrated  into  every  house ; 
whose  tortures  might  reach  every  individual,  however  elevated ; 
and  whose  existence  was  totally  incompatible  with  any  approach 
towards  freedom  of  commerce.  Following  up  her  history,  we 
find  her  always  seeking  trade  by  means  of  warlike  interferences 
with  the  movements  of  others — obtaining  colonies  to  be  adminis- 

*  In  relation  to  this  period,  M.  Guizot  says,  (History  of  Civilization,  p.  14 :) 
"  Take  Rome,  for  example,  in  the  splendid  days  of  the  republic,  at  the  close 
of  the  second  Punic  war ;  the  moment  of  her  greatest  virtues,  when  she  was 
rapidly  advancing  to  the  empire  of  the  world  —  when  her  social  condition  way 
evidently  improving."  This  was,  nevertheless,  the  period  in  which  land  was 
everywhere  becoming  consolidated  —  when  the  free  citizens  were  disappear 
ing —  when  slaves  were  most  rapidly  increasing  in  number  —  when  gladiato 
rial  games  were  introduced  —  when  the  people  were  most  rapidly  becoming 
demoralized  —  and  when  the  great  men  of  Rome  were  building  the  largest 
palaces  within  and  without  the  city — all  of  these  things  being  evidences  of  a 
decline  of  "social  condition." 

f  1286. 


APPROPRIATION.  249 

tered  for  the  sole  benefit  of  her  trading  aristocracy  —  taxing  her 
distant  subjects  to  such  an  extent  as  to  produce  a  constant  suc 
cession  of  attempts  at  revolution,  requiring  great  fleets  and 
armies  for  their  suppression ;  and  thus,  in  every  manner,  building 
up  the  class  that  lived  by  means  of  appropriation  of  the  property 
of  others  —  while  preventing  movement  in  any  direction  looking 
to  the  development  of  individuality,  or  to  the  promotion  of  the 
habit  of  association.  Her  whole  history  is  one  of  perpetually  in 
creasing  monopoly  of  trade  and  centralization  of  power — the  con 
sequences  of  which  are  seen  in  the  facts,  that  she  struck  no  roots 
into  the  earth  ;  and  that  when  the  day  of  trial  came,  she  fell,  as 
had  done  Athens,  Carthage,  and  Home ;  and  almost  without  a 
blow. 

The  histories  of  GENOA  and  PISA  are,  like  that  of  Venice,  but 
those  of  a  constant  succession  of  wars  for  securing  a  monopoly  of 
trade  and  of  power ;  and  the  power  thus  acquired  proved  to  be 
as  fleeting  as  had  been  that  of  Athens  and  of  Carthage. 

§  8.  The  early  history  of  HOLLAND  exhibits  a  people  among 
whom  the  habit  of  association,  and  the  development  of  individual 
ity,  grew  with  great  rapidity ;  but  her  later  one  is  distinguished 
among  those  of  modern  Europe  for  the  manifestations  it  presents 
of  a  desire  to  monopolize  trade  —  for  the  resistance  it  provoked 
in  both  France  and  England  —  for  the  wars  into  which  she  was 
led  by  the  thirst  for  trade  - —  for  the  exhaustion  consequent  upon 
those  wars  —  and  for  the  proof  it  furnishes  that  where  trade 
ceases  to  be  the  instrument  of  society,  and  comes  to  be  regarded 
as  the  object  for  the  promotion  of  which  society  is  to  be  used  — 
there  can  be  little  progress,  either  physical  or  intellectual.  The 
land  that  once  gave  to  the  world  such  men  as  Erasmus,  Spinoza, 
John  de  Witt,  and  William  of  Orange,  now  exercises  not  the 
smallest  influence  in  reference  to  either  literature  or  science,  and 
but  little  even  in  regard  to  trade. 

§  9.  In  the  history  of  PORTUGAL  we  have  striking  evidence  of 
the  weakness  of  communities  dependent  entirely  upon  trade  for 
the  prosperity  they  may,  for  the  time,  enjoy.  The  close  of  the 
fifteenth  century  witnessed  the  passage  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  and  the  establishment  of  Portuguese  power  throughout 

YOL.  I.— It 


250  CHAPTER  IX.    §  10. 

India,  where  war  was  everywhere  fomented  for  the  promotion  of 
trade.  Lisbon,  growing  by  help  of  the  monopolies  that  had 
been,  as  it  was  thought,  secured,  speedily  rose  to  occupy  the 
chief  place  among  European  cities  ;  but  here,  as  everywhere  else, 
the  strength  of  the  community  declined  as  the  capital  grew  in 
size  and  splendor — and  before  the  lapse  of  another  century,  Por 
tugal  itself  became  a  province  of  Spain. 

§  10.  Turning  next  to  SPAIN,  we  find  that,  as  the  result  of  a  long 
succession  of  wars  among  the  various  claimants  of  power,  anar 
chy  had,  in  the  period  immediately  anterior  to  the  union  of  the 
several  kingdoms,  in  1474,  attained  its  highest  point.  The 
castles  of  nobles  were  converted  into  dens  of  robbers,  from  which 
they  sallied  forth  to  plunder  travellers,  whose  spoil  was  after 
wards  sold  publicly  in  the  cities,  while  they  themselves  were  sold 
to  slavery  among  the  Moors.  Communications  on  the  highway 
were  everywhere  suspended,  while  within  the  cities  rival  nobles 
carried  on  private  wars — attacking  churches,  and  burning  dwell 
ings  to  the  number,  at  times,  of  thousands.  Instead  of  five  royal 
mints,  there  were  now  no  less  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  private 
ones ;  and  the  coin  became  so  much  debased,  that  the  common 
articles  of  life  were  three,  four,  and  even  sixfold,  enhanced  in  price. 

There  being  no  security  for  person  or  for  property,  the  hus 
bandman —  stripped  of  his  harvest  and  driven  from  his  field  — 
abandoned  himself  to  idleness,  or  resorted  to  plunder  as  the  only 
means  of  preserving  life.  Famines  were,  therefore,  frequent,  and 
were  succeeded  by  widespread  pestilences ;  and  thus  were  the 
people  reduced  to  the  most  squalid  poverty,  as  their  many  mas 
ters  were  enabled  to  acquire  property  and  power.  With  the 
union  of  Castile  and  Aragon  under  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  how 
ever,  we  find  a  change  of  condition  in  both  the  sovereigns  and  the 
people — castles  being  everywhere  destroyed,  and  the  country  being 
cleared  of  the  swarms  of  banditti  by  which  it  had  been  overrun. 

Security  of  person  and  of  property  being  thus  established,  and 
the  attention  of  the  sovereigns  being  now  given  to  the  resuscita 
tion  of  commerce,  internal  restrictions  were  removed,  and  foreign 
ers  were  invited  to  visit  the  ports  of  Spain.  Roads  and  bridges, 
moles,  quays,  and  lighthouses,  were  constructed,  and  harbors 
were  deepened  and  extended,  with  a  view  to  accommodate  the 


APPROPRIATION.  251 

great  "  increase  of  trade. "  The  power  of  coinage  was  limited  to 
the  royal  mints,  and  arrangements  were  made  for  establishing 
throughout  the  kingdom  a  uniform  system  of  weights  and  mea 
sures.  Numerous  oppressive  tolls  and  monopolies  were  abolished, 
and  the  alcavala,  a  tax  upon  exchanges,  which  previously  had 
been  arbitrary,  was  now  fixed  at  ten  per  cent. 

The  habit  of  association  now  growing  rapidly,  with  great  deve 
lopment  of  individuality,  the  mercantile  marine,  at  the  close  of 
the  century,  amounted  to  a  thousand  vessels ;  and  the  woollen 
and  silk  fabrics  of  Toledo  gave  employment  to  ten  thousand 
workmen.  Segovia  manufactured  fine  cloths,  while  Granada  and 
Valencia  produced  silks  and  velvets  ;  and  Yalladolid  became 
remarkable  for  its  curiously  wrought  plate  and  fine  cutlery,  while 
the  manufactures  of  Barcelona  rivalled  those  of  Venice.  The 
fair  of  Medina  del  Campo  became  the  great  mart  for  the  ex 
changes  of  the  peninsula ;  and  the  quays  of  Seville  began  to  be 
thronged  with  merchants  from  the  remotest  parts  of  Europe. 
The  impulse  thus  given  being  speedily  felt  in  the  arrangements 
for  intellectual  improvement,  ancient  seminaries  were  remodelled, 
and  new  ones  were  created — all  swarming  with  disciples,  and 
giving  employment  to  more  printing-presses  than  exist  in  Spain 
at  the  present  day. 

Union  at  home  gave,  however,  power  to  sovereigns  who  de 
sired,  most  unhappily,  to  use  it  for  the  destruction  of  the  habit 
of  association  abroad  —  and  for  centralizing  in  their  own  hands 
the  direction  of  the  modes  of  action  and  of  thought  of  all  their 
subjects.  Millions  of  the  most  industrious  people  of  the  king 
dom  —  among  whom  individuality  was  developed  to  an  extent 
then  unknown  in  any  other  part  of  Europe  —  were  expelled  for  dif 
ferences  of  belief;  and  thus  was  the  incipient  motion  of  society  to 
a  great  extent  arrested.  That,  in  its  turn,  tended  greatly  to  facili 
tate  the  recruitment  of  armies  to  be  employed  in  the  work  of  plunder 
ing  Italy  and  the  Netherlands,  Mexico  and  Peru  ;  and  the  greater 
the  tendency  to  dispersion,  the  more  rapid  proved  to  be  the  reduc 
tion  in  the  compensation  of  honest  labor.  The  more  numerous 
the  armies,  the  greater  was  the  growth  of  splendor,  and  of  weak 
ness  ;  and  the  result  is  seen  in  the  fact  that,  for  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years,  Madrid  has  been  the  focus  of  intrigues  having  refer 
ence  to  the  question  whether  France  or  England  should  have  the 


252  CHAPTER   IX.    §11. 

direction  of  its  government  —  and  the  kingdom  has  been  impove 
rished  by  repeated  wars  for  the  determination  of  the  succession 
to  its  throne.  In  the  effort  to  destroy  all  power  of  self- 
government  abroad,  Spain  had  lost  all  individuality  at  home.* 
Mistress  of  the  Indies,  she  was  too  weak  to  preserve  command 
over  her  own  Gibraltar ;  and  she  has  now  for  more  than  a  cen 
tury  been  forced  to  see  it  held  for  the  sole  and  exclusive  pur 
pose  of  enabling  foreigners  to  set  at  naught  her  laws.  In  every 
page  of  her  history  we  find  confirmation  of  the  lesson  that  had 
before  been  taught  by  Athens  and  Sparta,  Carthage  and  Rome — 
that  if  we  desire  to  command  respect  for  our  own  rights,  we  can 
do  so  only  on  condition  of  respecting  those  of  others,  f 

§11.  For  more  than  a  thousand  years,  the  sovereigns,  nobles,  and 
gentlemen  of  FRANCE  have  been  engaged  in  the  effort  to  destroy 
the  power  of  association  in,  and  among,  the  various  nations  of 

*  That  the  folly  of  oppression  is  equal  to  its  wickedness,  is  proved  by 
every  page  in  the  history  of  Spain,  but  in  none  more  clearly  than  in  those 
which  record  the  proceedings  of  the  Duke  of  Alva  in  the  Netherlands,  thus 
described  in  Mr.  Motley's  recent  work : 

"  During  the  daily  decimation  of  the  people's  lives,  he  thought  a  daily  de 
cimation  of  their  industry  possible.  His  persecutions  swept  the  land  of  those 
industrious  classes  which  had  made  it  the  rich  and  prosperous  commonwealth 
it  had  been  so  lately ;  while,  at  the  same  time,  he  found  a  '  Peruvian  mine,' 
as  he  pretended,  in  the  imposition  of  a  tenth  penny  upon  every  one  of  its 
commercial  transactions.  He  thought  that  a  people,  crippled  as  this  had 
been  by  the  operations  of  a  Blood  Council,  could  pay  ten  per  cent.,  not  an 
nually,  but  daily,  not  upon  its  income,  but  upon  its  capital ;  not  once  only, 
but  every  time  the  value  constituting  capital  changed  hands.  He  boasted 
that  he  should  require  no  funds  from  Spain,  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  he 
should  make  annual  remittances  to  the  royal  treasury  at  home,  from  the  pro 
ceeds  of  his  imposts  and  confiscations;  yet,  notwithstanding  these  resources, 
and  notwithstanding  twenty-five  millions  of  gold,  in  five  years,  sent  by  Phi 
lip  from  Madrid,  the  exchequer  of  the  provinces  was  barren  and  bankrupt, 
when  his  successor  arrived.  Requesens  found  neither  a  penny  in  the  pub 
lic  treasury,  nor  the  means  of  raising  one."  —  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  vol. 
ii.  p.  103. " 

f  "  The  Spaniard  alone  in  Europe  has  retained  the  faculty  of  looking  at  a 
nation's  acts  as  those  of  a  man,  and  appreciating  it  thereby.  He  does  not 
ask  what  it  says  or  intends,  or  what  food  it  eats,  or  how  many  servants  it 
ha8.  He  looks  at  its  dealings  with  himself.  The  Spaniard  knows  that  his 
two  neighbors,  for  one  hundred  and  forty  years,  have  been  seeking  to  rob 
and  overreach  him ;  plotting,  one  day,  the  partition  of  his  property  —  the 
next,  the  supplanting  of  his  heir ;  constantly  engaged  in  intrigues  amongst 
his  servants,  and  the  one  or  the  other  insisting  on  ruining  his  steward.  He 
sees  that,  during  all  that  time,  they  have  gained  nothing;  but  while  injur 
ing  him,  have  themselves  squandered  incalculable  fortunes  and  innumerable 
lives  —  what  can  he  feel  towards  them  but  hatred  and  disgust  ?" — URQUHART  : 
Pillars  of  Hercules,  vol.  i.  p.  48 


APPROPRIATION.  253 

the  world ;  as  is  shown  in  the  histories  of  the  Netherlands  and 
Germany,  Spain  and  Italy,  India  and  Egypt,  Northern  and 
Southern  America.  The  study  of  that  nation,  more  uninter 
ruptedly  than  that  of  almost  any  other  recorded  in  history,  has 
been  to  increase  the  machinery  of  trade  and  to  destroy  the  power 
to  maintain  commerce.  Swords  have  abounded,  while  spades 
were  rare ;  and  ships  of  war  have  been  numerous,  while  roads 
were  bad,  and  canals  had  no  existence.  Camps  have  everywhere 
grown  as  towns  and  villages  decayed,  and  gentlemen  have  become 
more  numerous  as  ploughmen  disappeared.  The  soil  they  culti 
vated  has,  however,  borne 

"Dead  Sea  fruits,  that  tempt  the  eye, 
But  turn  to  ashes  on  the  lips" — 

the  crop  that  has  been  harvested  having  been,  invariably,  weak 
ness,  disgrace,  and  almost  ruin. 

The  history  of  that  country  is  a  record  of  a  series  of  inter 
ferences  with  the  rights  of  other  communities,  rarely  intermitted 
except  when  it  has  itself  been  rendered  powerless  for  injury 
abroad  by  the  existence  of  disturbances  at  home.  Pepin  and 
Charlemagne,  having  sought  glory  in  Italy  and  Germany, 
bequeathed  to  their  successors  a  kingdom  so  exhausted  as  to  be 
entirely  incapable  of  defence  against  a  few  Norman  pirates,  and 
a  kingly  power  wholly  unable  to  sustain  itself  against  the  robber 
chiefs  by  whom  its  sovereigns  were  surrounded.  As  a  conse 
quence,  the  social  system  became  resolved  into  its  original  ele 
ments  ;  and  it  is  to  the  anarchy  which  then  existed  that  historians 
have  given  the  pompous  title  of  "The  Feudal  System,"  where 
system  there  was  none. 

Population  and  wealth  grew  very  slowly,  but  with  their  growth 
•may  be  observed  a  gradual  approach  towards  the  re-establishment 
of  a  central  power — a  sun  to  the  system,  around  which  might  peace 
fully  revolve  the  various  parts  of  French  society ;  but  accompa 
nied,  as  we  see  to  have  been  the  case  in  Spain,  by  a  strong  desire 
to  use  the  power  thus  acquired  for  the  prevention  of  motion  in 
societies  abroad.  Louis  IX.  squandered  the  resources  of  his 
kingdom  in  carrying  war  into  the  East ;  and  his  successors  em 
ployed  themselves  in  disturbing  the  repose  of  their  neighbors  of 
the  West — invading  their  territories,  plundering  their  towns  and 


254  CHAPTER   IX.    §11. 

cities,  and  murdering  the  inhabitants.  The  constant  pursuit  of 
glory  being,  however,  attended  by  increasing  weakness  at  home, 
but  little  time  elapsed  before  English  armies  were  seen  repeat 
ing  on  the  soil  of  France  the  scenes  of  plunder  and  devastation 
that  she,  herself,  had  enacted  abroad  —  occupying  her  capital, 
and  dictating  laws  to  her  people.  The  reign  of  anarchy 
having  again  returned,  all  power  of  voluntary  association  dis 
appeared. 

Again,  under  Louis  XI.,  we  meet  with  some  approach  towards 
the  reorganization  of  society  —  followed,  however,  by  repeated 
invasions  of  the  neighboring  countries  ;  and  now,  again,  the  effect 
of  unceasing  war  is  seen  in  the  almost  perfect  chaos  of  which  it 
was  the  cause,  as  exhibited  in  the  closing  reigns  of  the  House  of 
Yalois,  when,  the  kingly  power  having  almost  disappeared, 
foreign  armies  fearlessly  invaded  France,  incapable  of  re 
sistance. 

Once  again,  and  for  the  fourth  time,  society  became,  in  some 
degree,  reorganized  under  the  Bourbon  Henry  IV.,  and  his 
descendants.  With  the  resuscitation  of  power,  returned,  however, 
the  desire  for  its  exercise  to  the  injury  of  the  communities  around. 
Centralization  grew  with  the  growth  of  armies,  and  the  exhaus 
tion  of  the  people  increased  with  the  increase  of  splendor  in  the 
throne  ;  but  now,  again,  we  see  splendor  and  weakness  travelling 
together  —  the  closing  years  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIY.  having 
been  embittered  by  the  necessity  for  begging  a  peace  that  was 
refused  except  on  terms  to  be  dictated  by  Marlborough  and 
Prince  Eugene.* 

*  ' '  Vauban  and  Boisguilbert  have  described  in  the  most  pathetic  terms  the 
melancholy  reduction  of  the  productive  power  of  France  in  these  deplorable 
times.  'Nothing,'  as  they  said,  'remained  to  the  people  but  their  eyes 
with  which  to  shed  tears;'  and  we  cannot  hesitate  to  believe  in  the  reality 
of  their  misfortunes,  confirmed  as  they  are  by  such  unexceptionable  wit 
nesses.  Such  was  the  state  of  things  at  the  death  of  Louis.  Down  to  his 
last  moment,  the  government  had  been  kept  alive  only  by  means  of  the  most 
wretched  expedients.  To  obtain  some  little  money  from  the  new  employes,  the 
ministry  had  been  compelled  to  create  numerous  ridiculous  offices ;  and  while 
England  and  Holland  could  borrow  at  three  or  four  per  cent.,  the  farmers 
of  the  revenue  charged  the  king  of  France  ten,  twenty,  and  even  fifty,  per 
cent.  The  enormous  taxation  had  exhausted  the  country,  deprived  as  it 
had  been  of  laborers  by  reason  of  the  demands  for  the  war;  commerce  had 
almost  ceased  to  exist;  and  manufactures,  decimated  by  the  proscription  of 
the  Protestants,  seemed  condemned  to  lose  all  the  conquests  for  which  they 
had  been  indebted  to  the  genius  of  Colbert." — BLANQTJI:  Hisloire  d'JZconomie 
Politique,  vol.  ii.  65. 


APPROPRIATION.  255 

The  wars  of  Louis  XY.  and  XVI.  next  paved  the  way  for  the 

Revolution,  in  the  course  of  which  all  kingly  authority  disap 
peared—the  great-grandson  of  the  founder  of  Versailles  being 
seen,  in  the  Place  de  la  Revolution,  paying  forfeit  with  his  head 
for  all  the  previous  splendor  of  the  throne.  Order  again,  and  for 
the  fifth  time,  re-established,  we  find  the  whole  effort  of  the  coun 
try  once  more  given  to  the  destruction  of  all  power  of  association 
among  the  various  communities  of  Europe.  Again  were  Spain 
and  Italy,  the  Netherlands  and  Germany,  desolated  by  invading 
armies ;  and  again  did  France  exhibit  the  effect  of  constant 
interference  with  the  movement  of  others  in  utter  weakness  at 
home  —  her  capital  having  twice  been  occupied  by  foreign  armies 
—  and  her  throne  having  twice  been  filled  by  direction  of  foreign 
sovereigns.* 

*  "  From  1803  to  1815,  twelve  campaigns  cost  us  nearly  a  million  of  men, 
who  died  in  the  field  of  battle,  or  in  the  prisons,  or  on  the  roads,  or  in  the 
hospitals,  and  six  thousand  millions  of  francs.  ».**#•# 

"  Two  invasions  destroyed  or  consumed,  on  the  soil  of  old  France,  fifteen 
hundred  millions  of  raw  products,  or  of  manufactures,  of  houses,  of  workshops, 
of  machines,  and  of  animals,  indispensable  to  agriculture,  to  manufactures,  or 
to  commerce.  As  the  price  of  peace,  in  the  name  of  the  alliance,  our  coun 
try  has  seen  herself  compelled  to  pay  fifteen  hundred  additional  millions, 
that  she  might  not  too  soon  regain  her  well-being,  her  splendor,  and  her 
power.  Behold,  in  twelve  years,  nine  thousand  millions  of  francs"  (seven 
teen  hundred  millions  of  dollars)  "taken  from  the  productive  industry  of 
France  and  lost  for  ever.  We  found  ourselves  thus  dispossessed  of  all  our 
conquests,  and  with  two  hundred  thousand  strangers  encamped  on  our  terri 
tory,  where  they  lived,  at  the  expense  of  our  glory  and  of  our  fortune,  until 
the  end  of  the  year  1818."  — Dupin. 

As  a  consequence  of  this  enormous  waste  of  wealth  and  population,  com 
merce  scarcely  existed  between  the  several  parts  of  the  kingdom,  as  is  seen 
by  the  following  statements,  made  a  few  years  later  by  an  eminent  French 
engineer: — "I  have  frequently  traversed,  in  different  departments,  twenty 
square  leagues,  without  meeting  with  a  canal,  a  road,  a  factory,  or  even  an 
inhabited  estate.  The  country  seemed  a  place  of  exile  abandoned  to  the 
miserable,  whose  interests  and  whose  wants  are  equally  misunderstood,  and 
whose  distress  is  constantly  increasing,  because  of  the  low  prices  of  their 
products,  and  the  cost  of  transportation." —  Cordier. 

The  following  view  of  the  condition  of  a  large  portion  of  the  people  of 
France,  in  the  present  day,  is  from  the  pen  of  M.  Blanqui,  successor  of  M. 
J.  B.  Say  in  his  professorship ;  and  was  written  after  a  careful  examination 
of  the  various  provinces  of  the  kingdom. 

"  Whatever  diversity  exists  in  the  soil  occupied  by  the  people,  in  their 
customs,  aptitudes,  dispositions,  the  salient,  characteristic  fact  of  their  situ 
ation  is  wretchedness  —  a  general  insufficiency  of  the  means  of  satisfying 
even  the  first  necessities  of  life.  One  is  surprised  how  small  is  the  consump 
tion  of  these  myriads  of  human  beings.  They  constitute,  however,  the  ma 
jority  of  the  tax-payers ;  and  the  slightest  difference  in  their  favor,  of  in 
come,  would  not  merely  benefit  them,  but  vastly  advance  all  fortunes  and  the 
prosperity  of  the  state.  Those  alone  who  have  seen  it  can  believe  the  degree 


256  CHAPTER  IX.    §  11. 

Order  once  again  restored,  we  find  the  armies  and  fleets  of 
France  for  twenty  years  engaged  in  the  destruction  of  life  and 
property  in  Northern  Africa  ;  and  to  the  glory  thus  acquired  it 
was  that  Louis  Philippe  looked  for  the  means  of  fortifying  himself, 
and  establishing  in  his  family  the  succession  to  the  throne.  He 
proved,  however,  to  have  been  all  this  time  building  an  inverted 
pyramid — centralizing  power  in  Paris,  and  destroying  it  through 
out  the  provinces ;  and  when  the  day  of  trial  came  for  him,  he; 
too,  fell  without  a  blow.  Again,  we  see  the  present  emperor 
employed  in  the  work  of  centralization  —  diminishing  the  power 
of  association  at  home,  while  laboring  to  do  the  same  abroad  — 
enlarging  the  armies  and  the  fleets  on  the  one  hand,  while  on  the 
other  denying  to  his  people  the  right  freely  to  discuss  his  mea 
sures.  The  end  remains  to  be  seen,  but  glory  having  always, 
hitherto,  been  followed  by  exhaustion,  we  might,  perhaps,  assume 
that  the  future  weakness  of  France  would  be  in  the  precise  ratio 
of  her  present  splendor. 

In  no  country  of  modern  times  have  the  intimacy  of  war  and 
trade,  and  the  close  connection  between  all  the  classes  who  live 
by  appropriation,  been  more  fully  exhibited  than  in  the  one 
whose  history  has  above  been  given.  Its  sovereigns  have  been, 
uniformly,  traders — buying  the  precious  metals  at  low  prices,  and 
selling  them  at  high  ones,  until  the  pound  of  silver  degenerated 
to  the/ranc;  selling  offices  to  their  subjects  with  a  view  to  divide 
with  them  the  taxation  of  their  people  ;  and  selling  to  that  people 
the  privilege  of  applying  their  labor  in  such  manner  as  might 
enable  them  to  pay  the  taxes.  Farmers-general  —  traders  on  the 
grandest  scale — scourged  the  nation,  that  they  might  accumulate 
enormous  fortunes ;  and  warriors  sold  their  services  and  their 
consciences  —  receiving  in  return  shares  in  the  confiscations  of 
their  neighbors'  properties,  and  thus  constituting  themselves 
centres  of  the  exchanges  of  a  population  only  one  remove  from 
serfage. 

in  which  the  clothing,  furniture,  and  food  of  the  rural  population  are  slender 
and  sorry.  There  are  entire  cantons  in  which  particular  articles  of  clothing 
are  transmitted  from  father  to  son — in  which  the  domestic  utensils  are  sim 
ply  wooden  spoons,  and  the  furniture  a  bench  and  a  crazy  table.  You  may 
count  by  thousands  men  who  have  never  known  bed-sheets ;  others,  who 
have  never  worn  shoes ;  and,  by  millions,  those  who  drink  only  water,  who 
never  eat  meat,  or  very  rarely  —  nor  even  white  bread." —  Quoted  by  SMITH  : 
Manual  of  Political  Economy,  p.  97 


APPROPRIATION.  25  T 

§  12.  The  history  of  ENGLAND,  from  the  date  of  the  Re  volu 
tion  of  1688,  is  one  of  almost  unceasing  wars  for  the  extension 
of  trade ;  but,  as  the  system  proposed  to  be  established  differed 
essentially  from  all  that  had  preceded  it,  the  consideration  of 
those  wars,  and  of  their  effects,  will  find  a  place  more  properly 
in  another  chapter. 

In  our  own  country,  all  the  warlike  disposition  is  found  in  the 
Southern  States,  in  which  the  owner  of  slaves  acts  as  the  trader 
. —  regulating  all  the  exchanges  between  the  people  who  labor  to 
produce  cotton  and  tobacco,  and  those  who  need  to  consume 
cloth.  Here,  as  everywhere  else,  the  predominance  of  the  war 
like  and  trading  spirit  is  attended  by  growing  weakness,  conse 
quent  upon  the  daily  increasing  necessity  for  dispersion,  and 
constant  diminution  of  the  power  of  association.  Here,  how 
ever,  as  in  the  case  of  England,  there  exist  reasons  why  the 
consideration  of  the  policy  of  the  Union  may  properly  be  referred 
to  a  future  chapter. 

§  13.  That  the  power  of  voluntary  association  —  or  the  ability 
to  maintain  commerce  —  exists  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  develop 
ment  of  individuality,  is  a  fact  whose  truth  will  not  be  questioned 
by  those  who  have  observed  the  movements  of  the  people  of  whom 
society  is  composed.  It  is  as  true,  however,  of  nations  as  it  is 
of  persons  —  individuality  among  them,  too,  growing  with  the 
growth  of  peace  and  commerce,  and  declining  with  the  growth  of 
warlike  habits,  and  of  the  necessity  for  dependence  on  the  trader's 
services.  Every  step  in  the  one  direction  is  followed  with  in 
crease  in  that  mastery  over  nature  which  constitutes  wealth ; 
whereas  every  one  in  the  opposite  direction  is  followed  by  a 
decline  of  power  —  and  therefore  is  it  that  we  witness  the  aban 
donment  of  the  rich  soils  in  all  those  countries  in  which  war  or 
trade  obtains  the  mastery  over  commerce ;  as  in  Ireland,  Italy, 
India,  Turkey,  Virginia,  and  Carolina. 

The  less  the  power  of  local  association,  the  greater  is  the  tend 
ency  towards  centralization,  and  towards  the  creation  of  great 
cities,  as  was  seen  in  the  growth  of  Athens  and  of  Rome,  both 
of  which  were  most  magnificent  when  on  the  eve  of  ruin  ;  and  as 
may  now  be  seen  in  London,  Paris,  and  Calcutta.  With  the 
growth  of  centralization,  we  witness  a  constantly  increasing  in- 


258  CHAPTER   IX.    §13. 

equality  in  the  condition  of  the  various  portions  of  society — the 
few  accumulating  fortunes  most  rapidly  as  the  chances  of  war  and 
trade  tend  to  deprive  the  poorer  classes  of  bread.  Thus  it  was 
that  the  vast  fortunes  of  Crassus  and  Lucullus  were  accumulated 
at  the  time  when  the  people  of  Rome  were  compelled  to  look  to 
the  treasury  for  support ;  that  of  Jaques  Cceur  when  France  was 
becoming  almost  depopulated  ;  that  of  the  millionaire  Venetian, 
who  defeated  Carlo  Zeno  in  his  candidature  for  the  dogate,  dur 
ing  the  war  of  the  Chiozza,  in  which  Yenice  was  saved  by  the 
latter  from  entire  ruin;*  and  that  of  the  Medici,  in  the  period  of 
the  greatest  distress  in  Florence.  Weakness  of  the  community, 
however,  grows  in  the  ratio  of  the  magnificence  of  private  for 
tunes,  and  splendor  of  the  capital ;  and  with  growing  weakness, 
we  observe,  invariably,  a  tendency  to  the  employment  of  merce 
naries —  men  who,  for  the  sake  of  pay  or  plunder,  are  willing  to 
fight  in  any  cause,  as  was  the  case  with  Athens,  Carthage,  Rome, 
and  Spain  —  and  is  now  with  Britain. 

War  and  trade,  being  the  pursuits  of  man  requiring  the  small 
est  amount  of  knowledge,  take  precedence  of  all  others  in  their 
development.  The  necessity  for  carrying  arms  in  self-defence, 
and  for  dependence  on  the  services  of  the  trader,  tending,  in  the 
progress  of  society,  to  decline,  that  decline  should  everywhere  be 
accompanied  by  diminution  in  the  proportion  borne  by  soldiers 
and  traders  to  the  mass  of  which  the  community  is  composed. 
This  being  so,  society  tends  more  and  more  to  assume  that  form 
in  which  strength  and  beauty  are  most  combined ;  but  being 
otherwise — the  proportions  of  trade  and  war  tending  to  increase, 
and  commerce  tending  to  decline  —  it  takes  a  form  directly  the 
reverse,  that  of  an  inverted  pyramid.  Stability,  of  course,  dimi 
nishes  ;  and,  if  the  movement  in  that  direction  be  long  continued, 
it  ends  in  ruin,  as  we  see  to  have  been  the  case  with  Athens  and 
Carthage,  with  Yenice  and  Genoa,  and  with  Portugal  and  Tur 
key  ;  or  it  is  productive  of  an  endless  series  of  revolutions,  as  in 
France. 

*  "  Zeno  alone  survived  this  disastrous  war;  and  the  public  voice  desig 
nated  him  as  the  successor  of  Contarini  in  the  dogate.  His  name  was  in  the 
mouths  of  all,  people  and  army.  The  choice  lay  between  him  and  Michael 
Morosini,  who  had  tripled  his  fortune  by  speculation  during  the  war.  The 
latter  was  elected,  and  was  proclaimed  doge  June  10,  1382." — DARU:  His 
toric  de  Venise. 


APPROPRIATION.  259 

§  14.  Resistance  to  gravitation,  whether  in  the  vegetable,  or 
animal,  world,  is  in  the  direct  ratio  of  organization.  So,  too,  as 
the  reader  has  seen,  is  it  with  man.  The  higher  his  organization, 
the  greater  is  his  prospect  of  life.  So,  again,  is  it  with  societies 
—  the  chance  of  life  increasing  as,  with  the  development  of  the 
various  faculties  of  their  members,  they  become  more  highly 
organized.  The  policy  of  the  various  communities  above  refer 
red  to  having  looked  to  the  maintenance  of  the  power  of  the  sol 
dier  and  the  trader,  and  to  the  prevention  of  that  development, 
their  resistance  to  gravitation  necessarily  declined,  until,  at  length, 
as  with  Athens,  Carthage,  and  Rome,  death  closed  their  uneasy  lives. 

Every  increase  in  the  proportion  of  society  engaged  in  war 
and  trade  tends  towards  centralization  and  slavery  —  it  being  a 
necessary  result  of  declining  individuality,  and  diminished  power 
of  voluntary  association.  Every  diminution  of  that  proportion 
tends  towards  decentralization,  life,  and  freedom — it  being  a  con 
sequence  of  higher  development  of  individuality,  increased  power 
of  association,  and  more  perfect  organization  of  society. 

The  strength  of  a  community  grows  in  the  ratio  of  the  growth 
of  the  power  of  association,  and  the  perfection  of  its  organization. 
The  more  numerous  the  differences  among  the  members,  the  more 
perfect  must  be  the  organization,  and  the  greater,  therefore,  the 
strength. 

Differences  result  from  association,  or  commerce  —  and  com 
merce  grows  with  the  development  of  individuality  and  the  pro 
duction  of  differences  ;  and  the  less  the  necessity  for  the  services 
of  the  soldier  and  the  trader,  the  more  rapid  becomes  the  growth 
of  commerce. 

The  power  of  association  grows  in  the  ratio  of  the  observance 
by  communities  of  that  great  law  of  Christianity  which  teaches 
respect  for  the  rights  of  our  fellow-men  —  and  as  strength  grows 
with  the  growth  of  association,  it  follows,  naturally,  that  the 
nation  which  would  increase  in  strength,  and  in  the  durability  of 
its  institutions,  should  carry  into  the  management  of  its  public 
affairs  the  same  system  of  morals  recognised  as  binding  on  its 
individual  members. 

Desiring  now  to  find  the  causes  of  the  decline  and  ultimate 
ruin  of  various  communities  of  the  world,  we  must  seek  them 
through  an  examination  of  the  policy  they  have,  of  choice,  or  of 


260  CHAPTER    IX.    §  15. 

necessity,  pursued  —  whether  the  one  tending  to  increase  in  the 
proportion  of  the  classes  of  society  above  referred  to ;  or  that 
tending  to  its  diminution  ;  and  in  all  cases  we  shall  find  that  while 
the  former  has  led  to  ruin  and  death,  the  latter  has  brought  increase 
of  wealth,  prosperity,  happiness,  and  life. 

§  15.  The  Ricardo-Malthusian  doctrine  having  been  invented 
to  account,  by  means  of  laws  instituted  by  the  Creator,  for  the 
existence  of  social  disease  —  and  thus  to  relieve  from  all  responsi 
bility  the  class  that  lives  by  appropriation  and  directs  the  affairs 
of  nations  —  it  is  no  matter  of  surprise  that  modern  political  eco 
nomy  looks  upon  the  men  whose  occupations  are  war  and  trade 
in  a  light  different  from  that  in  which  they  have  here  been  repre 
sented.  Mr.  McCulloch  tells  us  that  the  wagoner  is  as  much  a 
producer  as  the  farmer,  and  that  absenteeism  —  requiring  the  em 
ployment  of  middlemen,  or  traders,  between  the  owner  of  the  land 
and  those  who  cultivate  it — is  a  benefit,  and  not  an  evil.  M.  Che 
valier  limits  the  sphere  of  political  economy  to  transactions  in 
which  merchandise  is  bought  or  sold  ;*  and  M.  Bastiat  informs  us 
that  it  is  one  of  the  errors  of  modern  socialism  to  class  among  the 
parasitic  races  the  intermediaires,  or  middlemen,  between  the 
producer  and  the  consumer.  The  broker  and  the  merchant  being, 
as  he  tells  us,  creators  of  value,  it  is,  as  he  thinks,  perfectly  cor 
rect  to  class  them  with  agriculturists  and  manufacturers ;  each 
and  all  being  equally  middlemen  —  performing  services  for  which 
they  expect  to  be  remunerated. 

It  is  quite  true  that  the  middleman  is  "a  creator  of  values," 
but  for  that  reason  it  is,  that  men  so  universally  rejoice  in  being 
enabled  to  dispense  with  his  services.  Value  being  the  measure 
of  nature's  power  over  man,  and  the  value  of  man  increasing  with 
the  decline  in  that  of  the  commodities  required  for  his  use,  it  fol 
lows,  necessarily,  that  to  whatever  extent  the  trader  adds  to  the 
value  of  the  commodities  he  sells,  he  must  diminish  the  value  of 
man.  Of  the  price  charged  to  the  people  of  England  for  the 
commodities  they  consume,  a  very  large  proportion  goes  to  the 

*  "  I  have  defined  political  economy  in  saying  that  it  is  a  science  which 
has  for  its  object  the  application  of  the  existing  and  recognised  principles  of 
public  law  to  a  certain  species  of  facts  —  that  species  which  gives  rise  to  the 
transactions  ordinarily  expressed  by  the  terms  buying  and  selling." — Jour 
nal  des  Economistes,  February,  1853. 


APPROPRIATION.  261 

middlemen,  who  are  thus  enriched  at  the  cost  of  both  consumer 
and  producer.  So  is  it,  too,  in  Turkey,  where  the  profits  of  trade 
are  enormously  large.  So,  again,  in  India  —  in  Mexico- — in  our 
Western  States — and  in  the  islands  of  the  Pacific  ;  and  indeed  in 
all  those  countries  in  which  men  are  unable  to  combine  their 
efforts  with  those  of  their  fellow-men.  The  trader  is  a  necessity, 
and  not  a  power  —  and  so  is  it  with  all  the  classes  of  society  to 
which  reference  has  here  been  made.  With  every  increase  in 
population  and  wealth,  men  become  more  and  more  enabled  to 
come  together  and  arrange  their  affairs  for  themselves — with  con 
stant  diminution  in  their  need  for  employing  middlemen,  whe 
ther  in  the  capacity  of  brokers,  traders,  policemen,  soldiers, 
or  magistrates  ;  and  the  more  they  can  dispense  with  the  services 
of  such  persons,  the  stronger  must  they  themselves  become,  and 
the  greater  must  be  the  tendency  of  society  to  take  upon  itself  a 
form  uniting  strength  and  durability  —  and  one  most  accordant 
with  our  ideas  of  beauty. 

Of  the  classes  here  referred  to,  all  desire  that  men  shall  be 
cheap,  while  the  men  themselves  desire  that  labor  shall  be  dear. 
The  politician  knows  that  when  men  are  cheap,  they  are  more 
readily  managed  than  when  they  are  dear.  The  sovereign  finds 
it  more  easy  to  obtain  soldiers  when  wages  are  low  than  when 
they  are  high.  The  great  landholder  desires  that  men  may  be 
cheap,  and  therefore  easily  obtained.*  The  trader  desires  that 
labor  may  be  cheap  when  he  buys  his  goods ;  and  that  goods  may 
be  high,  and  labor,  of  course,  low,  when  he  sells  them.  All  these 
persons  regard  man  as  the  instrument  to  be  used  by  trade.  All 
of  them  are  necessary  in  the  early  stages  of  society,  but  the  neces 
sity  for  their  services  should  diminish  —  and  men  should  as  much 

*  "  The  Chinese  slave-trade  is  very  busy  in  Peru,  whither  they  are  con 
veyed  from  China  by  English  and  American  vessels.  They  are  enticed  from 
their  homes,  smuggled  on  shipboard,  and  treated  like  brutes.  One  Ameri 
can  ship,  which  sailed  from  China  with  six  hundred  and  five,  lost  two  hun 
dred  and  one  on  the  passage. 

"There  has  been  for  many  months  a  project  on  foot  for  the  introduction 
of  six  thousand  from  China  into  Cuba,  as  plantation  laborers,  to  supply  the 
place  of  negroes,  the  importation  of  whom  from  Africa  is  to  be  prohibited, 
if  possible.  The  English  capitalists  having  the  matter  in  charge  were 
delayed  in  their  arrangements  by  the  urgent  want  of  vessels  for  the  Crimea, 
which  rendered  it  difficult  to  effect  suitable  charters  in  London.  They  have 
finally  transferred  the  scene  of  their  labors  to  this  city,  and  a  vessel  is  now 
fitting  out  at  this  port  for  China,  under  a  contract  for  twelve  hundred  and 
fifty  emigrants.  " —  New  York  Journal  of  Commerce. 


262  CHAPTER   IX.    §  15. 

rejoice  at  every  such  diminution  as  at  the  substitution  of  the 
steamship  for  the  sailing  one  —  the  pump  for  the  hand — or  the 
great  waterworks  for  the  pump.  The  less  the  machinery  required 
for  the  maintenance  of  commerce  among  men,  the  greater  must 
that  commerce  be. 

The  great  difficulty  in  all  these  cases  is  that  resulting  from  the 
fact  of  the  same  word  being  constantly  used  to  express  totally 
different  ideas.  The  man  who  makes  a  thousand  pairs  of  shoes 
for  a  thousand  people,  each  of  whom  comes  to  him  to  be  fitted, 
maintains  a  commerce  altogether  unimpeded  by  any  necessity  for 
paying  porters,  or  commission  merchants.  His  neighbor,  making 
the  same  number,  finds  it  necessary  to  employ  a  porter  to  carry 
them  to  the  trader,  and  then  to  pay  the  trader  for  finding  persons 
to  buy  and  pay  for  them.  We  have  here  three  distinct  operations, 
each  requiring  to  be  paid  for  :  first,  that  of  the  trader  who  simply 
arranges  the  terms  of  exchange,  appropriating  a  part  of  the  pro 
ceeds  as  compensation  for  his  services ;  second,  that  of  the  por 
ter,  who  effects  changes  of  place  ;  and,  third,  that  of  the  shoe 
maker,  who  effects  changes  of  form  —  the  reward  of  the  last  be 
ing  dependent  entirely  upon  the  quantity  that  remains  to  him,  after 
the  others  have  been  paid.  All  of  these  operations,  it  is  the  habit 
to  include  under  the  general  head  of  commerce ;  whereas  the  real 
parties  to  the  commerce  are  only  the  man  who  makes  the  shoes 
and  those  who  wear  them.  The  others  are  useful,  in  so  far  as 
they  are  necessary ;  but  whatever  tends  to  diminish  the  need  for 
their  services  is  as  much  a  gain  to  man,  as  is  improvement  in  ma 
chinery  of  any  other  description  whatsoever.  His  value  rises  with 
every  diminution  of  the  obstacles  to  commerce,  and  the  greatest 
of  all  these  obstacles,  is  the  necessity  for  employing  the  trader  and 
transporter  in  the  work  of  effecting  changes  of  place.  * 

*  According  to  Mr.  McCulloch  (Principles,  Part  I.,  Ch.  3)  wealth  increases 
most  rapidly  when  the  rate  of  profit  is  the  highest.  Who,  however,  is  it,  that 
receives  these  profits  ?  It  is  the  intermediaire>  or  middleman  —  the  represent 
tative  of  those  obstacles  to  commerce  which  cause  increase  of  values.  The 
more  the  number,  and  the  greater  the  extent,  of  the  difficulties  to  be  over 
come  by  commodities,  on  the  road  from  the  producer  to  the  consumer,  the 
greater  is  always  the  rate  of  profit,  the  higher  are  values,  and  the  lower  is 
the  condition  of  man ;  and  yet,  according  to  this  authority,  it  is  then,  and 
there,  that  wealth  must  most  rapidly  accumulate ! 


OP  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  263 


CHAPTER    X. 

Or   CHANGES   OF   MATTER  IN   PLACE. 

§  1.  THE  first  poor  colonist,  unable  to  raise  the  logs  by  help 
of  which  to  construct  himself  a  house,  is  compelled  to  depend  for 
shelter  upon  projecting  rocks ;  or  to  bury  himself  in  cavities  of 
the  earth — affording  little  protection  against  the  summer's  heat, 
or  the  winter's  cold.  Unable  to  command  the  services  of  nature, 
he  is  obliged  to  wander  over  extensive  tracts  of  land  in  quest 
of  food,  whose  transportation  to  his  home,  even  when  obtained, 
not  unfrequently  exceeds  his  own  unassisted  powers  ;  and  thence  it 
is,  that  the  spoils  of  the  chase  lie  wasting  on  the  ground,  while  he 
and  his  wife  are  suffering  from  want  of  proper  nourishment.  In 
time,  however,  his  sons  grow  up,  and  now,  combining  their  exer 
tions,  they  make  for  themselves  instruments,  by  help  of  which  to 
command  the  natural  forces  to  such  extent,  as  to  enable  them 
to  cut  and  transport  logs,  and  to  build  for  themselves  something 
like  a  house.  Again,  they  are  seen  constructing  other  instru 
ments,  by  aid  of  which  they  obtain  increased  supplies  of  food, 
and  from  diminished  surfaces,  with  constant  decline  in  the  propor 
tion  of  their  labor  required  for  effecting  changes  in  the  place  of 
matter,  and  increase  in  the  proportion  that  may  be  given  to 
changing  its  form,  with  a  view  to  fitting  it  for  furnishing  nourish 
ment,  or  for  aiding  in  the  work  of  production. 

The  life  of  man  is  a  contest  with  nature.  His  prime  necessity, 
and  his  first  desire,  is  that  of  association  with  his  fellow-men  — 
and  the  obstacle  to  the  gratification  of  that  desire  is  found  in  the 
necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place.  Poor  and  weak,  the  early 
settler,  unable  to  obtain  an  axe,  a  spade,  or  a  plough,  is  forced 
to  cultivate  the  poorest  soils — yielding  so  little  food,  that  he  must, 
of  necessity,  remain  apart  from  other  men.  As  numbers  increase, 
wealth  grows,  and  with  the  growth  of  wealth  and  numbers,  he  is 
enabled  to  cultivate  the  richer  soils  —  yielding  increased  supplies 


264  CHAPTER   X.    §  2. 

of  food,  and  diminishing  his  need  for  going  abroad,  and  separat 
ing  himself  from  his  fellow-men.  From  a  mere  creature  of  neces 
sity,  he  passes  into  a  being  of  power,  from  year  to  year  more 
enabled  to  obtain  machinery  by  help  of  which  to  maintain  com 
merce  with  distant  men,  while  becoming  from  year  to  year  more 
individualized,  and  less  dependent  on  that  commerce  for  his  com 
mand  of  the  conveniences,  comforts,  and  luxuries  of  life.  The 
powers  of  nature  become  embodied  in  THE  MAN,  whose  value 
grows  as  that  of  all  commodities  declines ;  and  with  that  growth 
he  finds  a  daily  diminution  in  her  resistance  to  his  further 
efforts. 

§  2.  Looking  now  to  the  solitary  settler  of  the  West,  even 
where  provided  with  both  axe  and  spade,  we  see  him  with  diffi 
culty  obtaining  the  commonest  log  hut.  A  neighbor,  however, 
arrives,  bringing  with  him  a  horse  and  cart ;  and  now  a  second 
house  may  be  built  with  less  than  half  the  labor  that  had  been 
given  to  the  first.  Others  coming,  more  houses  are  required; 
and  now,  by  the  combined  efforts  of  the  settlement,  a  third  is  com 
pleted  in  a  day,  whereas  the  first  had  required  months,  and  the 
second  weeks,  of  severe  exertion.  These  new  neighbors  having 
brought  with  them  ploughs  and  hoes,  better  soils  are  cultivated  ; 
with  large  increase  in  the  return  to  labor,  and  in  the  power  to 
preserve  the  surplus  for  the  winter's  use. 

The  Indian  path  that  they  at  first  had  used,  now  becomes  a 
road,  and  exchanges  with  distant  settlements  begin — the  preludes 
to  the  establishment  of  the  store,  destined  to  become  the  nucleus 
of  the  future  town.  Population  and  wealth  again  increasing,  and 
better  soils  being  cultivated,  the  town  begins  to  grow,  and  with 
each  successive  addition  to  its  numbers,  the  farmer  finds  a  consu 
mer  for  his  products,  and  a  producer  ready  to  supply  his  wants — 
the  shoemaker  seeking  to  have  leather  and  corn  in  exchange  for 
shoes,  and  the  carpenter  shoes  and  corn  in  exchange  for  his  labor. 
The  blacksmith  requires  fuel  and  food,  and  the  farmer  needs  shoes 
for  his  horses  ;  and  thus  from  day  to  day  commerce  increases,  with 
corresponding  decline  in  the  necessity  for  transportation.  More 
time  being  now  given  to  production,  the  reward  of  labor  rises, 
with  constant  increase  of  commerce.  The  road  becoming  a  turn 
pike,  and  the  town  becoming  a  city,  the  market  near  at  hand 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  265 

grows  steadily,  while  the  railroad  facilitates  exchanges  with  dis 
tant  towns  and  cities. 

The  tendency  to  union,  and  to  combination  of  exertion,  thus 
grows  with  the  growth  of  wealth.  In  a  state  of  extreme  poverty 
it  cannot  be  developed.  The  insignificant  tribe  of  savages  that 
roams  over  millions  of  acres  of  the  most  fertile  land,  looks  with 
jealous  eyes  on  every  intruder — knowing  that  each  new  mouth  re 
quiring  to  be  fed,  increases  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  food ;  where 
as,  the  farmer  rejoices  in  the  approach  of  the  blacksmith  and  the 
shoemaker,  because  they  come  to  eat  in  his  neighborhood  the  corn 
which  hitherto  he  has  carried  to  the  distant  market,  there  to  be 
exchanged  for  shoes  for  his  horses  and  himself.  With  each  new 
consumer  of  his  products  that  arrives,  he  is  enabled  more  and 
more  to  concentrate  his  action  and  his  thoughts  upon  his  home  ; 
and  his  power  to  consume  the  commodities  brought  from  other 
lands  increases  with  the  diminution  of  the  necessity  for  seeking  at 
a  distance  a  market  for  the  products  of  his  farm.  Give  to  the 
poor  tribe  spades,  and  the  knowledge  how  to  use  them,  and  the 
power  of  combination  will  arise.  The  supply  of  food  becoming 
more  abundant,  they  hail  the  arrival  of  the  stranger  who  brings 
them  knives  and  clothing  to  be  exchanged  for  skins  and  corn ; 
wealth  grows,  and  with  it  grows  the  habit  of  association. 

The  little  tribe  is,  however,  compelled  to  occupy  the  higher 
and  poorer  lands  —  the  lower  and  richer  ones  consisting  of  dense 
forests  and  dreary  swamps,  among  which  nature  reigns  supreme — 
setting  at  defiance  all  the  efforts  of  poor  and  scattered  men.  On 
the  opposite  slope  of  the  valley,  but  a  few  miles  distant,  may  be 
found  another  little  tribe,  but  —  the  river  bottom  being  yet  un 
cleared,  and  bridges  as  yet  unthought  of — there  is  no  intercourse 
between  them.  Population  and  wealth,  however,  continuing  to 
increase — and  food  being  obtained  in  return  to  less  exertion — the 
power  of  association  as  steadily  augments,  with  constantly  in 
creasing  appreciation  of  the  advantages  to  be  derived  from  fur 
ther  combination.  Roads  being  now  made  in  the  direction  of 
the  river  bank,  the  supply  of  food  increases  rapidly,  because  of 
the  increased  facility  for  cultivating  the  richer  soils ;  and  still 
more  rapid  is  the  growth  in  numbers  and  in  wealth. 

The  river  bank  at  length  being  reached,  the  new  wealth  now 
takes  the  form  of  a  bridge,  by  help  of  which  the  little  communi- 

YOL.  I.— 18 


266  CHAPTER   X.    §  2. 

ties  are  enabled  more  readily  to  combine  their  efforts  for  the  com 
mon  good.  One  requires  carts,  or  wagons,  while  the  other  has 
corn  seeking  to  be  converted  into  flour ;  one  has  hides  to  spare, 
while  the  other  has  an  excess  of  shoes,  or  cloth.  One  has  a 
windmill ;  while  the  other  rejoices  in  the  possession  of  a  saw 
mill.  —  Exchanges  increase ;  employments  become  from  day  to 
day  more  diversified  ;  and  the  towns  increase  in  numbers  and  in 
strength,  by  reason  of  the  increased  amount  of  commerce.  Roads 
being  now  made  in  the  direction  of  other  settlements,  the  forests 
and  swamps  by  which  they  have  thus  far  been  separated,  gradu 
ally  disappear — yielding  to  cultivation  the  richest  soils,  with  in 
creased  returns  to  labor,  enabling  the  laborer  to  obtain  from  year 
to  year  better  food,  clothing,  and  shelter,  and  with  less  expendi 
ture  of  muscular  force.  The  danger  of  famine  now  disappears  ; 
life  is  prolonged,  and  numbers  increase  ;  with  corresponding  in 
crease  in  the  facility  of  combination  for  every  useful  purpose — the 
distinguishing  characteristic  of  civilization. 

With  further  growth  of  population  and  of  wealth,  the  desires 
of  man,  and  his  ability  to  gratify  them,  steadily  advance.  The 
nation  that  has  now  been  formed  has  an  excess  of  wool,  but  is 
deficient  in  sugar ;  whereas,  in  a  neighboring  one  may  be  found 
excess  of  sugar,  while  the  supply  of  wool  is  insufficient.  The  two 
arc,  however,  separated  from  each  other  by  broad  forests,  deep 
swamps,  and  rapid  rivers  —  obstacles  to  intercourse  the  removal 
of  which  is  required  to  await  the  further  progress  of  population 
and  of  wealth.  Both  of  these  now  further  grow,  and  next  the 
forests  and  swamps  disappear  —  giving  place  to  rich  farms, 
through  which  broad  roads  are  made,  with  great  bridges,  and 
enabling  the  merchant  readily  to  transport  wool  to  exchange 
with  his  now  rich  neighbors  for  their  surplus  sugar.  Nations 
next  combining  their  exertions,  wealth  grows  with  still  increased 
rapidity — facilitating  the  drainage  of  marshes,  and  thus  bringing 
into  activity  the  richest  soils ;  while  coal-mines  cheaply  furnish 
fuel  for  converting  limestone  into  lime,  and  iron  ore  into  spades 
and  axes — or  into  rails  for  the  new  roads  required  for  sending  to 
market  the  vast  products  of  the  fertile  soils  now  cultivated  ;  and 
for  bringing  back  the  large  supplies  of  sugar,  tea,  coffee,  and 
other  products  of  distant  lands,  with  which  intercourse  is  now 
maintained.  At  each  step,  population  and  wealth,  happiness 


OF   CHANGES   OF    MATTER  IN   PLACE.  26 Y 

and  prosperity,  make  a  new  bound ;  and  men  realize  with  diffi 
culty  the  fact  that  the  country  which  now  affords  to  tens  of  mil 
lions  all  the  necessaries,  comforts,  conveniences,  and  luxuries  of 
life,  is  the  same  that  —  when  the  superabundant  land  had  been 
occupied  by  tens  of  thousands  only  —  gave  to  that  limited  num 
ber  scanty  supplies  of  the  poorest  food  —  so  scanty,  that  famines 
were  frequent,  and  followed  in  their  wake  by  pestilence,  which, 
at  brief  intervals,  swept  from  the  earth  the  population  of  the  little 
and  scattered  settlements  of  the  hills. 

We  have  here  a  constantly  accelerating  motion  of  society  and 
an  increase  of  commerce,  resulting  from  a  steady  diminution  in  the 
proportion  of  the  labor  of  the  community  required  for  effecting 
changes  of  place,  consequent  upon  a  steady  increase  in  the  power 
of  combination,  and  in  the  development  of  individuality  resulting 
from  diversity  of  employment.  As  the  village  grows  and  becomes 
more  self-sufficing,  it  acquires  the  ability  to  improve  its  commu 
nications  with  neighboring  villages  ;  and  all  are  next  enabled  to 
aid  in  effecting  improvements  in  the  roads  to  the  more  distant 
town.  As  employment  becomes  more  diversified  in  the  town,  it 
is  enabled  to  combine  its  efforts  with  its  neighbor  towns,  to  effect 
improvements  in  the  transport  to  and  from  the  more  distant  city ; 
and  as  the  cities  grow,  they,  in  like  manner,  are  enabled  to  unite 
in  facilitating  intercourse  with  distant  nations.  The  power  to 
maintain  commerce  grows  thus,  with  every  diminution  in  the 
necessity  for  trade  and  transportation. 

§  3.  The  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place  is  an  obstacle 
interposed  by  nature  to  the  gratification  of  the  wishes  of  man ; 
and  it  was  required  that  it  should  exist,  in  order  that  his  faculties 
might  be  stimulated  to  exertion  for  its  removal.  Those  faculties 
exist  in  all  men,  but  they  remain  latent  when  not  stimulated  into 
action  by  a  feeling  of  the  advantage  that  must  result  from  in 
creased  power  to  maintain  intercourse  with  their  fellow-men. 
The  greater  the  facility  of  intercourse,  the  more  are  its  benefits 
appreciated,  and  the  greater  becomes  the  consciousness  of  power 
to  effect  further  improvement  —  looking  to  entire  removal  of  the 
obstacle  standing  in  the  way  of  direct  intercourse  between  men 
and  their  fellow-men  —  or,  commerce.  In  the  early  stages  of 
society,  it  is  so  great  as  to  be  almost  insuperable ;  and  hence  it 


268  CHAPTER    X.    §  3. 

is  that  we  even  now  see  that  while  the  value  of  commodities  at  the 
place  of  consumption  is,  in  many  cases,  so  great  as  to  cause  them 
to  be  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  any  but  the  wealthy,  their 
value  at  the  place  of  production  is  so  small  as  to  keep  their  pro 
ducer  in  a  state  of  poverty,  and  retain  him  in  the  position  of 
slave,  not  only  to  nature,  but  also  to  his  fellow-man.  The  sugar 
producer  of  Brazil  cannot  obtain  clothing  with  which  to  conceal 
his  nakedness ;  while  the  cloth  producer  of  England  is  equally 
unable  to  obtain  the  sugar  required  for  the  sustenance  of  his 
family  and  himself.  That  such  should  be  the  case,  results  from 
no  defect  in  the  arrangements  of  Providence  —  nature  yielding 
abundantly  in  return  to  the  efforts  of  both,  and  doing  her  part 
towards  enabling  them  to  be  well  clothed  and  fed ;  but  it  does 
result  from  error  in  the  arrangements  of  men.  The  man  of  Eng 
land,  and  of  Brazil,  would  have  full  supplies  of  food  —  would  be 
well  clothed — and  would  become  more  free,  could  the  one  obtain 
all  the  cloth  given  for  his  sugar,  and  the  other  all  the  sugar  given 
for  his  cloth  ;  and  it  is  because  so  large  a  portion  is  absorbed  in 
the  passage  from  one  to  the  other,  that  the  condition  of  both  is 
so  near  akin  to  slavery. 

But  thirty  years  since,  the  price  of  a  bushel  of  wheat  in  Ohio 
was  less  than  a  third  of  that  at  which  it  would  sell  in  Philadel 
phia  or  New  York — all  the  difference  being  absorbed  in  the  pas 
sage  from  the  producer  to  the  consumer.  The  first  then  obtained 
little  cloth  in  exchange  for  his  food,  and  the  latter  little  food  in 
exchange  for  his  cloth. — But  recently,  corn  abounded  in  Castile, 
for  which  no  market  could  be  found ;  while  Andalusia,  part  of 
the  same  kingdom,  looked  to  America  for  supplies  of  food. — -At 
the  present  day,  food  is  wasted  in  one  part  of  India,  while 
hundreds  of  thousands  perish  of  famine  in  another.  So  is  it 
everywhere,  in  default  of  that  diversity  of  employment  which 
makes  a  market  for  its  products  on,  or  near,  the  land.  "In 
Russia,  a  propitious  season  and  an  abundant  crop,"  says  a  recent 
traveller,  "do  not  guaranty  a  profitable  season  to  the  farmer. 
The  prices,"  dependent  as  they  are  upon  the  chances  and  changes 
of  distant  lands,  "may,"  as  he  continues,  " suddenly  have  fallen 
so  low,  that  no  physical  combination  of  circumstances  can  benefit 
him.  *  *  *  He  is  thus  the  victim  of  circumstances" — 
over  which  he  can  exercise  no  control  whatsoever.  "Totally  un- 


OF   CHANGES   OF    MATTER   IN   PLACE.  269 

able  to  affect  the  price  of  grain  himself,  it  depends  on  the  demand 
for  foreign  countries,  the  facilities  of  communication,  and  his  posi 
tion  -with  regard  to  them  —  with  many  other  causes  incidental  to 
an  immense,  but  thinly-peopled,  country,  affected  in  its  extremi 
ties  by  very  different  temperatures,  liable  during  the  same  year 
to  famine  and  plenty  occurring  in  distant  quarters,  between  which 
it  is  matter  of  pure  hazard  if  there  exist  any  means  of  communi 
cation."*  The  picture  here  presented  is  that  of  all  purely  agri 
cultural  countries  —  their  crops  being  almost  altogether  absorbed 
in  the  cost  of  transportation,  because  of  the  exceeding  distance  of 
the  consumer  from  the  producer.  Hence  it  is,  that  slavery,  or 
serfage,  prevails  in  those  communities  in  which  employments  are 
not  diversified. 

Sixty  years  since,  the  utility  of  the  produce  of  Ohio  was  very 
small  indeed  —  so  small,  that  it  required,  as  then  was  said,  all 
that  an  acre  could  be  made  to  yield,  ' '  to  pay  for  a  pair  of 
breeches."  Thirty  years  since,  its  utility  had  much  increased, 
but  yet  was  very  trivial  —  the  major  part  of  it  being  required  for 
feeding  the  men  and  horses  who  carried  it  to  market ;  whereas, 
the  value  of  .all  commodities  needed  by  the  farmer  was  so  great, 
that  it  required  fifteen  tons  of  wheat  to  pay  for  a  single  ton  of 
iron.  The  people  of  that  State  had  then  but  little  power  over 
nature  ;  but,  as  they  have  increased  in  numbers,  power  has  been 
obtained,  and  they  are  now  in  the  enjoyment  of  wealth — because 
of  the  removal  of  some  of  the  obstacles  standing  in  the  way  of 
commerce. 

To  this  it  is  due,  that  while  the  utility  of  their  own  products 
has  largely  increased,  by  reason  of  the  diminished  proportion 
required  to  feed  the  men  and  animals  engaged  in  transportation  ; 
the  value  of  the  iron  has  so  greatly  diminished,  that  six  or  eight 
tons  may  now  be  obtained  in  return  for  the  same  wheat  that 
would  then  have  been  given  in  exchange  for  one.  As  a  conse 
quence  of  this,  a  single  year  enables  the  farmer  to  add  more,  in 
quantity  and  quality,  to  his  machinery  of  cultivation,  than  before 
he  could  do  in  twenty — substituting  the  continuous  motion  of  the 
horse-rake  and  of  the  reaping  and  threshing  machines,  for  the 
constantly  intermitted  one  of  the  hand-rake,  the  reaping-hook,  the 
scythe,  and  the  flail  —  and  enabling  him  to  apply  himself  with  in- 
*  OLIPHANT  :  Russian  Shores  of  the  Black  Sea,  p.  134. 


270  CHAPTER   X.    §  3. 

creased  rapidity  to  the  removal  of  the  yet  remaining  obstacles 
consequent  upon  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place. 
The  better  the  roads,  the  greater  is  the  demand  for  machinery ; 
and  the  greater  the  latter,  the  greater  is  the  tendency  to  have  the 
miller,  the  blacksmith,  the  carpenter,  the  spinner,  the  weaver,  the 
miner,  and  the  iron-founder  come  to  take  their  places  near  the  far 
mer  ;  with  great  increase  in  the  motion  of  society,  in  the  attrac 
tion  of  home,  and  in  the  power  of  combination  with  people  abroad. 

Man's  power  over  nature  tends,  thus,  steadily  to  grow,  and 
every  stage  of  his  progress  towards  power  is  accompanied,  natu 
rally  and  necessarily,  with  diminished  resistance  to  his  further 
efforts.  There  is,  therefore,  a  constant  tendency  towards  accele 
ration  of  motion  ;  and  the  momentum  of  a  body  is,  as  the  reader 
knows,  as  its  weight,  multiplied  by  its  velocity.  The  Indian 
trails  of  the  Six  Nations  must  have  cost  a  greater  amount  of 
effort  than  was  subsequently  required  for  laying  out,  clearing,  and 
making  the  State  road  ;  and  that,  in  its  turn,  was  a  work  of  more 
serious  labor  than  was,  but  a  few  years  later,  the  construction  of 
the  railroad.  The  turnpike  road  from  Baltimore  to  Cumberland, 
a  distance  of  a  hundred  and  eighty  miles,  was,  but  forty  years 
since,  so  great  a  work,  that  the  Federal  treasury  was  required  to 
bear  the  cost  of  its  construction  ;  but  railroads  now  increase  with 
such  rapidity,  that  the  people  of  the  Ohio  Yalley  already  have  the 
choice  among  many  such,  when  they  desire  to  visit  the  Atlantic 
cities.  The  Santa  Maria,  Columbus 's  great  ship,  had  a  capacity 
of  but  ninety  tons  ;  and  yet  the  construction  of  such  a  vessel  was 
then  a  far  more  serious  matter  than  is  now  that  of  a  steamer 
which  would  accomplish  the  same  voyage  in  fewer  weeks  than  she 
required  of  months.  Here,  as  everywhere,  the  first  step  requires 
the  most  effort,  and  yields  the  smallest  return.  With  every  addi 
tional  one,  the  value  of  man  rises,  and  that  of  commodities  falls  ; 
and  with  each  we  see  an  increase  in  the  wealth  at  his  command, 
giving  him  increased  facilities  for  further  accumulation. 

Thus  far,  however,  we  have  made  but  a  single  step  in  that  direc 
tion.  The  power  to  become  useful  to  man  is  a  force  latent  in  all 
the  matter  by  which  he  is  surrounded ;  but  the  development  of 
that  force  is  everywhere  retarded  by  the  difficulty  attendant  upon 
effecting  changes  of  place.  The  savage  is  compelled  to  leave 
upon  the  ground,  for  the  consumption  of  birds  of  prey,  a  most 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER  IN   PLACE.  2T1 

valuable  portion  of  the  spoils  yielded  by  the  chase  ;  whereas  the 
man  who  lives  in  society  with  his  fellow-man,  is  enabled  to  utilize 
not  only  the  flesh,  but  the  skin,  the  bones,  and  even  the  yet  undi 
gested  contents  of  the  stomach.  The  isolated  man  fells  the  tall 
tree,  that  he  may  obtain  the  cabbage  which  constitutes  its  head  — 
leaving  the  trunk  to  become  the  prey  of  worms  ;  but  the  associ 
ated  man  utilizes  not  only  the  trunk,  but  the  limbs,  the  bark,  and 
even  the  leaves.  The  few  and  scattered  people  who  cultivate  the 
poor  soils  of  a  new  settlement,  carry  their  food  and  their  wool  to 
a  distant  market  —  losing  the  manure,  and  thus  adding  the  ex 
haustion  of  the  soil,  and  consequent  stoppage  of  motion  in  their 
land,  to  the  cost  of  transportation ;  whereas  the  associated  man 
saves  all  that  cost,  and  makes  his  land  richer  with  every  crop.  The 
isolated  man  wanders  over  extensive  tracts  rich  with  coal  and 
metallic  ores,  and  continues  poor ;  but  the  associated  man  uti 
lizes  such  deposits,  and  improves  his  machinery  for  the  produc 
tion  of  food  —  and  the  more  he  does  so,  the  greater  is  the  power 
of  further  association  and  further  increase  of  combination.  Look 
to  it  where  we  may,  we  see  that  as  men  are  enabled  to  come  toge 
ther,  they  obtain  power  to  command  the  services  of  nature  —  im 
proving  their  roads  as  they  diminish  their  dependence  on  the 
machinery  of  transportation  —  and  transporting  tons  with  less 
effort  than  had  been  required  for  the  removal  of  pounds ;  although 
with  each  successive  year  they  find  themselves  more  and  more  en 
abled  to  compress  their  raw  materials  into  cloth  and  iron,  and 
thus  dimmish  the  weight  of  the  commodities  requiring  to  be  trans 
ported. 

§  4.  The  first  and  heaviest  tax  to  be  paid  by  land  and  labor  is 
that  of  transportation ;  and  it  is  the  only  one  to  which  the  claims 
of  the  state  itself  are  forced  to  yield  precedence.  It  increases  in 
geometrical  proportion,  as  the  distance  from  market  increases 
arithmetically ;  and  therefore  it  is,  that  agreeably  to  tables  recently 
published,  corn  that  would  produce  at  market  $24.75  per  ton,  is 
worth  nothing  at  a  distance  of  only  a  hundred  and  sixty  miles, 
when  the  communication  is  by  means  of  the  ordinary  wagon  road 
— the  cost  of  transportation  being  equal  to  the  selling  price.  By 
railroad,  under  ordinary  circumstances,  that  cost  is  but  $2.40  — 
leaving  to  the  farmer  $22.35,  as  the  amount  of  tax  saved  to  him 


272  CHAPTER   X.    §  4. 

by  the  construction  of  the  road  ;  and  if  we  now  take  the  product 
of  an  acre  of  land  as  averaging  a  ton,  the  saving  is  equal  to  inte 
rest,  at  six  per  cent.,  on  $310  an  acre.  Assuming  the  product 
of  an  acre  of  wheat  to  be  twenty  bushels,  the  saving  is  equal  to 
the  interest  on  $200  ;  but,  if  we  take  the  more  bulky  products  — 
hay,  potatoes,  and  turnips  —  it  will  be  found  to  amount  to  thrice 
that  sum.  Hence  it  is  that  an  acre  of  land  near  London  sells 
for  thousands  of  dollars,  while  one  of  exactly  equal  quality  may 
be  purchased  in  Iowa,  or  Wisconsin,  for  little  more  than  a  single 
dollar.  The  owner  of  the  first  enjoys  the  vast  advantage  of  the 
endless  motion  of  its  products  —  taking  from  it  several  crops  in 
the  year,  and  returning  to  it,  at  once,  a  quantity  of  manure  equal 
to  all  he  had  abstracted  ;  and  thus  improving  his  land  from  year 
to  year.  He  is  making  a  machine  ;  whereas,  his  western  compe 
titor,  forced  to  lose  the  manure,  is  destroying  one.  Having  no 
transportation  to  pay,  the  former  can  raise  those  things  of  which 
the  earth  yields  largely  —  as  potatoes,  carrots,  or  turnips  —  or 
those  whose  delicate  character  forbids  that  they  should  be  carried 
to  distant  markets ;  and  thus  does  he  obtain  a  large  reward  for 
that  continuous  application  of  his  faculties,  and  of  his  land,  which 
results  from  the  power  of  combination  with  his  fellow-men. 

In  the  case  of  the  latter,  all  is  widely  different.  Having  heavy 
transportation  to  pay,  he  cannot  raise  potatoes,  turnips,  or  hay, 
because  of  them  the  earth  yields  by  tons ;  as  a  consequence  of 
which,  they  would  be  almost,  even  when  not  wholly,  absorbed  on 
the  road  to  market.  He  may  raise  wheat,  of  which  the  earth 
yields  by  bushels  ;  or  cotton,  of  which  it  yields  by  pounds  ;  but  if 
he  raises  even  Indian  corn,  he  must  manufacture  it  into  pork  before 
the  cost  of  transportation  can  be  so  far  diminished  as  to  enable 
him  to  obtain  a  proper  reward  for  labor.  Rotation  of  crops  being, 
therefore,  a  thing  unknown  to  him,  there  can  be  no  continuity  of 
motion  in  either  himself  or  his  land.  His  corn  occupies  the  lat 
ter  but  a  part  of  the  year,  while  the  necessity  for  renovating  the 
soil,  by  means  of  fallows,  causes  a  large  portion  of  his  farm  to 
remain  altogether  idle,  although  the  cost  of  maintaining  roads 
and  fences  is  precisely  the  same  as  if  it  were  all  fully  employed. 

His  time,  too,  being  required  only  for  certain  portions  of  the 
year,  much  of  it  is  altogether  lost  —  as  is  that  of  his  wagon  and 
horses — the  consumption  of  which  latter  is  just  as  great  as  if  they 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  273 

were  always  at  work.  He,  and  they,  are  in  the  condition  of 
steam-engines,  constantly  fed  with  fuel,  while  the  engineer  as 
regularly  wastes  the  steam  that  is  produced  —  a  proceeding  in 
volving  heavy  loss  of  capital.  Further  stoppages  in  the  motion 
of  himself  and  his  land,  resulting  from  changes  in  the  weather, 
are  consequent  upon  this  limitation  in  the  variety  of  things  that 
may  be  cultivated.  His  crop,  perhaps,  requires  rain  that  does 
not  come,  and  his  corn,  or  cotton,  perishes  of  drought.  Once 
grown,  it  requires  light  and  heat,  but  in  their  place  come  clouds 
and  rain ;  and  it  and  he  are  nearly  ruined.  The  farmer  near 
London,  or  Paris,  is  in  the  condition  of  an  underwriter  who  has 
a  thousand  risks,  some  of  which  are  maturing  every  day ;  where 
as,  the  distant  one  is  in  that  of  a  man  who  has  risked  his  whole 
fortune  on  a  single  ship.  Having  made  the  voyage,  she  arrives 
at  the  entrance  of  her  destined  port,  when,  striking  on  a  rock,  she 
is  lost,  and  her  owner  is  ruined.  Precisely  such  is  the  condi 
tion  of  the  farmer  who  — having  his  all  at  risk  on  his  single  crop 
—  sees  it  destroyed  by  blight,  or  mildew,  almost  at  the  moment 
when  he  had  expected  to  make  his  harvest.  With  isolated  men, 
all  pursuits  are  extra-hazardous ;  but  as  they  are  enabled  to  ap 
proach  each  other,  and  combine  their  efforts,  the  risks  diminish, 
until  they  almost  altogether  disappear.  Combination  of  action 
thus  makes  of  society  a  general  insurance  office,  by  help  of  which 
each  and  all  of  its  members  are  enabled  to  secure  themselves 
against  almost  every  imaginable  risk. 

Great,  however,  as  are  these  differences,  they  sink  almost 
into  insignificance,  compared  with  that  which  exists  in  reference 
to  the  maintenance  of  the  powers  of  the  land.  The  farmer  dis 
tant  from  market  is  always  selling  the  soil,  which  constitutes  his 
capital ;  whereas,  the  one  near  London  not  only  returns  to  his 
land  the  refuse  of  its  products,  but  adds  thereto  the  manure 
resulting  from  the  consumption  of  the  vast  amount  of  wheat 
brought  from  Russia  and  America  —  of  cotton  brought  from  Ca 
rolina  and  India  —  of  sugar,  coffee,  rice,  and  other  commodities, 
yielded  by  the  tropics  —  of  lumber  and  of  wool,  the  products  of 
Canada  and  Australia  —  not  only  maintaining  the  motion  of  his 
land,  but  increasing  it  from  year  to  year. 

§  5.    Of  all  the  things  required  for  the  purposes  of  man,  the 


274  CHAPTER  x.  §5. 

one  that  least  bears  transportation,  and  is,  yet,  of  all  the  most 
important,  is  manure.  The  soil  can  continue  to  produce  on  the 
condition,  only,  of  restoring  to  it  the  elements  of  which  its  crop 
had  been  composed.  That  being  complied  with,  the  supply  of 
food  increases,  and  men  are  enabled  to  come  nearer  together  and 
combine  their  efforts  —  developing  their  individual  faculties,  and 
thus  increasing  their  wealth ;  and  yet  this  condition  of  improve 
ment,  essential  as  it  is,  has  been  overlooked  by  all  economists. 
The  subject  being  one  of  much  importance,  and  having  been 
treated  at  considerable  length  in  a  work  to  which  reference  has 
heretofore  been  made,  it  is  deemed  expedient  to  submit  for  the 
consideration  of  the  reader  the  following  passage  : — 

"  Every  crop  is  made  from  matter  furnished  by  its  predeces 
sors  ;  and  whatever  is  lacking  in  the  manure  will  surely,  sooner 
or  later,  disappear  in  the  product.  Exhaustion  and  renovation 
must  reciprocate  in  equal  measure.  If  any  element,  however 
minute  in  quantity,  is  constantly  withdrawn  and  removed  from 
the  soil,  the  product  of  which  it  is  a  constituent  must  finally 
cease  to  reappear.  If  animals  are  fed  upon  the  land,  their  excre 
ments  restore  a  large  portion  of  the  inorganic  matter,  of  which 
the  plants  on  which  they  feed  have  robbed  the  soil.  But  the 
richest  pasture  will,  after  a  time,  show  signs  of  exhaustion,  if 
the  young  cattle  that  grow  upon  it  are  sent  to  distant  markets 
Let  the  cattle  remain,  and  their  manure  be  faithfully  restored  :  if 
they  are  cows,  a  considerable  quantity  of  phosphate  of  lime  is 
contained  in  their  milk ;  and  if  this  is  sent  away  in  its  original 
form,  or  in  the  shape  of  butter  and  cheese,  the  soil  must  cease  to 
furnish  pasture  which  will  make  milk.  The  grass-lands  of  Che 
shire,  in  England,  famous  for  its  dairy  husbandry,  were  thus  im 
poverished.  They  were  restored  by  the  application  of  ground 
bones  —  human  bones,  in  a  great  measure,  imported  from  the 
battle-fields  of  the  continent  —  which  contain  essentially  the  s&me 
substances  as  the  milk.  The  importance  of  what  might  seem  an 
insignificant  loss  to  the  land,  is  shown  by  the  fact  stated  by  Pro 
fessor  Johnston,  that  lands  which  paid  but  five  shillings  an  acre 
of  rent,  have  been,  by  restoring  the  bone  phosphates,  of  which 
they  had  been  ignorantly  robbed,  made  to  yield  a  rent  of  forty 
shillings,  besides  a  good  profit  to  the  dairyman.  Different  crops 
take  away  the  inorganic  substances  of  the  soil  in  different  propor- 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  275 

tions  ;  the  grains,  for  instance,  take  chiefly  phosphates  ;  potatoes 
and  turnips,  mostly  potash  and  soda ;  but  all  crops,  natural  or 
artificial,  deprive  the  land  of  some  essential  ingredient,  and,  in 
whatever  shape  the  ingredient  is  finally  removed,  in  animal  or 
human  muscle  and  bones,  in  cloth  made  from  the  cotton,  the  wool, 
or  the  flax,  boots  or  hats  made  from  the  skin  or  the  fur  of  the 
animals,  no  matter  how  many  transformations  the  elements  may 
have  undergone,  the  vegetative  power  of  the  earth  from  which 
they  were  withdrawn  has  been  diminished  to  an  equivalent  extent. 
Nature  is  an  easy  creditor,  and  presents  no  bill  of  damages  for 
exhausted  fertility.  We  are,  therefore,  little  accustomed  to  take 
account  of  what  is  due  to  the  earth.  An  idea,  however,  of  the 
great  pecuniary  magnitude  of  the  debt  may  be  gained  from  the 
fact,  that  the  manure  annually  applied  to  the  soil  of  Great  Bri 
tain,  at  its  market  prices,  was  estimated  in  1850*  at  £103,369,139, 
a  sum  much  exceeding  the  entire  value  of  its  foreign  trade.  In 
Belgium,  which  sustains  a  population  of  336  to  the  square  mile — 
one  to  every  arable  acre  in  the  kingdom  —  which,  according  to 
Mr.  McCulloch,  'produces  commonly  more  than  double  the  quan 
tity  of  corn  required  for  the  consumption  of  its  inhabitants  ; '  and 
where  immense  numbers  of  cattle  are  stall-fed  for  the  sake  of  their 
manure,  the  liquid  excrements  of  a  single  cow  sell  for  ten  dollars 
a  year.  The  people  of  Belgium  are  able,  by  making  their  own 
population,  animal  and  human,  the  most  dense  of  any  country  in 
the  world,  to  raise  beef,  mutton,  pork,  butter,  and  grain,  cheaply 
enough  to  admit  of  their  exportation  to  England,  to  feed  people 
who  believe  in  over-population. 

"  The  necessity  of  taking  into  account  the  comparative  exhaus 
tion  resulting  from  the  growth  and  removal  of  different  crops,  as 
well  as  their  comparative  cheapness  of  transportation,  modifies 
considerably  the  inferences  which  would  otherwise  be  made  in 
regard  to  their  value.  A  work  in  which  all  the  circumstances 
which  can  affect  the  economy  of  different  modes  of  cultivation,  are 
subjected  to  rigorous  mathematical  calculation^  —  the  necessary 

*  Macqiieen's  Statistics,  p.  12. 

f  DE  THUNEN:  "  Recherches  sur  1'Influence  que  le  Prix  des  Grains,  la 
Richesse  du  Sol,  et  les  Irapots,  exercent  sur  la  Culture,"  p.  178.  The  work 
is  only  known  to  the  writer  in  the  French  translation,  made  from  the  original 
German,  under  the  auspices  of  the  National  and  Central  Agricultural  Society 
of  France. 


276  CHAPTER   X.    §5. 

elements  being  derived  from  exact  accounts,  kept  by  its  author 
during  fifteen  years  of  superintendence  of  an  agricultural  school 
and  model  farm  in  Germany  —  supplies  us  with  this  illustration. 
Three  bushels  of  potatoes,  it  is  said,  have  been  ascertained  to 
possess  the  same  amount  of  nutritive  power  as  one  bushel  of  rye 
. —  the  standard  with  which  all  crops  are  compared  by  this  writer. 
It  is  also  stated  that  ground,  equal  in  extent  and  of  equal  qua 
lity,  will  produce  nine  bushels  of  potatoes  where  it  would  yield 
but  one  of  rye,  while  one  bushel  of  the  latter  demands  as  much 
labor  as  5T7o  of  the  former.  A  given  quantity  of  nutriment  could 
therefore  be  obtained  upon  one-third  the  area  of  land,  and  with 
half  the  amount  of  labour,  by  the  cultivation  of  potatoes, 
which  would  be  required  to  produce  it  in  the  shape  of  rye. 
But  in  order  to  keep  the  soil  in  heart,  so  that  it  will  continue  to 
yield  either  rye  or  potatoes,  a  certain  portion  of  the  farm  must  be 
devoted  to  pasturage,  that  manure  may  be  made.  Taking  into 
account  the  requirements  in  this  respect  of  the  two  crops  in  ques 
tion,  it  is  found  that  the  same  area  which  suffices  for  the  produc 
tion  of  39  measures  of  nutritive  matter  in  rye,  instead  of  producing 
three  times  that  number  in  potatoes,  yields  but  64.  The  actual 
value  of  the  two  crops,  instead  of  bearing  the  proportion  of  100 
to  300,  has  that  of  100  to  164. 

"  The  above  calculation  proceeds  upon  the  assumption,  that  the 
farm  must  manufacture  and  save  its  own  manure.  Every  town, 
however,  every  hamlet  where  artisans  are  congregated,  is  a  place 
whence  the  refuse  of  crops,  after  subserving  human  nutrition,  may 
be  removed  with  great  advantage  to  the  health  of  the  inhabitants, 
and  no  detriment  to  the  productiveness  of  their  industry.  The 
sewer-water  of  large  towns  contains  its  refuse  in  a  state  of  dilu 
tion,  highly  favorable  to  the  growth  of  plants  and  the  increase  of 
fertility.  '  From  every  town  of  a  thousand  inhabitants, '  says  Pro 
fessor  Johnston,  '  is  carried  annually  into  the  sea,  manure  equal 
to  210  tons  of  guano,  worth,  at  the  then  current  price  of  guano 
in  England,  $13,000,  and  capable  of  raising  an  increased  produce 
of  not  less  than  1000  quarters  of  grain.'  It  is  alleged  by  compe 
tent  engineers,  that  liquid  manure  can  be  distributed  at  a  much 
less  cost  than  that  of  carting  an  equal  fertilizing  value  in  a  solid 
form.  The  drainage-water  from  a  large  portion  of  the  city  of 
Edinburgh  has  been  conducted  into  a  small  brook,  and  made  to 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  277 

overflow  some  three  hundred  acres  of  flat  land,  which  is  thus  ren 
dered  so  productive  as  to  be  sometimes  mown  seven  times  in  a 
season.  A  portion  of  it,  held  under  a  long  lease  at  £5  per  acre, 
is  sub -let  at  £30,  and  some  of  the  richest  meadows  at  even  higher 
rates.  Advantages  of  ,this  character  are  the  result  of  combina 
tion  upon  a  large  scale.  The  centres  of  population,  however, 
supply  manures  which  may  be  made  immediately  available  by  the 
individual  farmer,  with  no  other  assistance  than  that  of  his  own 
carts  and  horses.  Whether  it  is  more  profitable  to  manufacture 
manure  upon  the  farm,  by  devoting  to  that  object  portions  of  the 
land  which  might  otherwise  grow  crops  for  sale,  or  to  procure 
the  manure  from  town,  depends  upon  the  price  which  must  be 
paid  for  it,  and  the  distance  to  which  it  has  to  be  carried.  The 
German  agriculturist,  to  whom  we  before  referred,  has  deduced 
the  relation  between  the  prices  the  farmer  can  afford  to  pay  for 
fertilizing  material  at  the  town — for  the  purpose  of  growing  pota 
toes  with  the  same  economy  as  if  it  were  made  from  other  crops 
upon  the  farm  —  and  the  distance  it  is  to  be  transported.  The 
result  at  which  he  arrives  is,  that  a  quantity  of  manure  which 
would  be  worth  $5.40,  for  the  purpose  of  applying  to  land  in  the 
immediate  suburbs  of  the  town,  or  where  the  expense  of  cartage 
is  so  trifling  that  it  may  be  disregarded,  is  worth  $4.20,  if  the 
farm  be  one  German  mile  (4'60  English  miles)  distant — $3.10,  if 
the  distance  be  two  German  miles  —  $1.90,  at  three  miles  —  83 
cents  at  four ;  and  that  at  the  distance  of  4|  German,  or  about 
22  English,  miles,  he  can  pay  nothing  for  it,  though  he  may  still 
carry  it  away  as  cheaply  as  to  give  up  the  growing  of  potatoes 
upon  that  portion  of  his  land  which  must  otherwise  be  devoted  to 
the  growth  of  crops  for  restoring  the  fertility  which  the  tubercles 
exhaust. 

"  It  follows,  from  considerations  which  in  the  preceding  para 
graphs  it  has  been  sought  to  elucidate,  in  scant  proportion  to 
their  importance,  that  the  vicinity  of  the  producer  to  the  place 
where  conversion  and  exchange  are  effected  —  in  other  words,  to 
the  consumers — is  an  indispensable  condition  of  his  being  able  to 
raise  those  crops  which  the  earth  yields  most  abundantly.  The 
same  space  which,  sown  with  wheat,  gives  what  has  been  termed 
muscular  matter  —  that  is,  muscle-sustaining  power  —  to  the 
amount  of  two  hundred  pounds,  if  planted  with  cabbages  gives 


218  CHAPTER   X.     §5. 

fifteen  hundred  pounds  ;  in  turnips,  a  thousand  pounds  ;  in  beans, 
four  hundred.  It  is,  however,  as  we  have  seen,  but  a  limited 
circle  around  the  centres  of  population  in  which  the  agriculturist 
has  the  capacity  to  determine  freely  to  what  object  he  will  conse 
crate  his  land  and  his  labor.  In  proportion  to  his  distance  from 
the  consumer,  two  causes  act  in  concert  to  contract  his  power. 
The  first  is  the  cost  of  transporting  the  crop  to  market,  which 
compels  him  to  select  those  whose  bulk  is  small  compared  to  their 
value,  because  they  require  much  land  and  much  labor  for  their 
production.  The  second  is  the  difficulty  of  bringing  back,  over 
the  increasing  distance,  the  refuse  of  the  crop  ;  in  default  of  which 
the  crop  itself  runs  out.  Whatever  may  be  the  quality  of  soil  cul 
tivated,  these  conclusions  are  equally  valid.  They  hold  good, 
without  reference  to  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  the  theory  of 
Ricardo,  in  regard  to  the  occupation  of  the  earth ;  while  they  are 
fatal  to  that  of  Malthus,  as  showing  that  density  of  population  is 
essential  to  the  plenitude  of  subsistence."* 

The  sum  of  all  the  taxes  thus  far  described  is  immense,  and  yet 
they  constitute  but  a  portion  of  those  to  which  our  Western  far 
mers  are  subjected.  The  man  who  must  go  to  any  market,  must 
pay  the  cost  of  getting  there,  let  it  take  what  form,  it  may  ;  and 
among  the  charges  are  those  of  marine  and  fire  insurance,  always 
estimated  in  fixing  the  price  of  his  commodities.  All  the  losses 
from  the  numerous  fires  in  great  commercial  cities  —  such  as  have 
been  witnessed  in  New  York  and  Liverpool,  Hamburg,  Memel, 
and  London — are  payable  out  of  the  commodities  furnished  by  the 
farmer ;  and  are  not,  in  any  manner,  payable  by  those  who  stand 
between  him  and  his  market.  So  far,  indeed,  to  the  contrary  is 
it,  that  the  latter  profit  largely  by  the  losses  that  are  incurred  — 
among  the  most  advantageous  portions  of  their  business  being 
that  of  insurance  against  losses  that  never  could  occur  were  the 
markets  for  raw  produce  everywhere  near  at  hand.  The  farmer 
near  London  has  no  insurance  to  pay  —  all  his  commodities  find 
ing  a  demand  on  the  instant,  and  at  the  place  of  production. f 

*  SMITH  :  Manual  of  Political  Economy,  p.  203. 

j-  Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beeclier,  in  a  sermon  which  he  delivered  in  New  York, 
stated  that  over  fifty  American  vessels  have  sailed  from  port,  and  since  been 
given  up  as  lost — never  heard  from — in  the  last  twelve  months.  Within  the 
same  time,  three  large  ocean  steamers  and  three  sailing  packets,  all  loaded 
with  passengers,  have  been  wrecked  and  totally  lost  on  the  American  coast. 
Besides  these  there  is  the  "City  of  Glasgow,"  with  another  freight  of  human 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER  IN   PLACE.  2*7 9 

Such  are  a  portion — and  a  portion  only — of  the  taxes  imposed 
upon  land  and  labor  by  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of 
place,  consequent  upon  dependence  on  a  distant  market.  Having 
examined  them,  the  reader  can  scarcely  doubt  that  they  account 
fully  for  the  facts  that  in  all  purely  agricultural  countries  land  is 
valueless,  and  man  continues  in  a  state  of  slavery.  Wherever 
mills  and  furnaces  are  built,  and  mines  are  opened,  there  arises  a 
demand  for  potatoes  and  turnips,  cabbages  and  hay,  strawberries 
and  raspberries  —  enabling  the  farmer  to  take  from  the  land  tons, 
where  before  he  had  taken  bushels  ;  and  to  restore  to  it,  again  all 
the  elements  of  which  it  had  been  deprived.  Being  at  market,  and 
saving  all  the  cost  of  transportation  and  commission,  he  is  enabled 
to  improve  his  machinery  of  cultivation.  Clearing  and  draining 
his  richest  lands,  while  bringing  into  activity  the  lime,  or  other 
minerals  and  metals,  abounding  in  his  poorer  ones,  he  has  a  suc 
cession  of  crops  ripening  at  various  periods  of  the  year  ;  the  per 
fect  success  of  some  of  which  makes  amends  for  partial  failure  of 
others  —  thus  giving  to  his  pursuit  a  certainty  of  remuneration 
that  before  had  no  existence.  He  now  finds  on  his  farm  a  conti 
nuous  demand  for  his  own  labor,  and  for  that  of  his  horses  ;  and 
this  he  does  for  the  reason,  that  whenever  he  sends  a  load  of  food 
to  market,  his  wagon  returns  laden  with  offal  yielded  at  that 
market — enabling  him  to  improve  his  land.  Time  becoming  more 
valuable,  he  is  constantly  substituting  machinery  of  continuous 
motion  for  that  heretofore  in  use,  by  help  of  which  intermitted 
motion  had  been  obtained ;  and  thus  on  and  on  he  goes,  with 
constantly  accelerated  force — enabling  constantly  increasing  num 
bers  to  obtain  larger  supplies  of  food,  with  steady  increase  in  the 
power  of  association,  in  the  development  of  individuality,  and  in 
the  power  of  further  progress. 

§  6.  Every  step  in  the  progress  of  association  being  attended 
by  a  diminution  in  the  proportion  of  labor  of  a  community  re- 
life — given  up.  Two  hundred  and  one  vessels  have  been  reported  lost  with 
in  a  single  week.  The  losses  paid  by  marine  insurance  companies,  in  New 
York  alone,  exceed  twelve  million  dollars  for  the  last  year.  From  a  return 
to  the  British  House  of-  Commons,  it  appears  that  from  January,  1847,  to 
December,  1 850,  there  happened  at  sea  upwards  of  twelve  thousand  casual 
ties,  varying  in  magnitude  from  the  shipwreck  at  the  dead  of  night,  with  all 
its  horrors,  to  a  clumsy  collision  in  the  Channel.  The  amount  of  the  loss  of 
life  averages  (per  year)  twelve  hundred  and  fifty. 


280  CHAPTER   X.    §  6. 

quired  to  be  given  the  effectuation  of  changes  of  place  —  and  by 
an  increase  in  that  which  may  be  given  to  effecting  changes  of 
form  by  the  processes  of  agriculture  or  manufactures,  the  farmer 
is  enabled  to  subdue  to  cultivation  still  richer  soils,  and  daily 
more  and  more  to  elaborate  their  products  so  as  to  fit  them  on 
the  instant  for  consumption  at  home  —  or  cheaply  to  seek  consu 
mers  in  distant  lands ;  the  power  to  maintain  commerce  with  dis 
tant  men  increasing  with  every  step  towards  individuality  in  the 
community,  resulting  from  diminution  in  the  necessity  for  seeking 
a  distant  market.  The  power  of  man  for  effecting  changes  of 
place  increases,  therefore,  in  a  ratio  greatly  exceeding  that  of  the 
growth  of  population,  with  steady  increase  in  the  utility  of  the 
commodities  produced,  in  the  wealth,  strength,  and  force  of  the 
community,  and  in  the  prosperity  and  happiness  of  the  people  of 
whom  it  is  composed. 

That  every  act  of  association  is  an  act  of  commerce,  is  a  truth 
of  such  high  importance  that  it  cannot  be  too  strongly  impressed 
upon  the  reader's  mind,  and  he  may,  therefore,  forgive  its  repeti 
tion.  The  growth  of  commerce  being  in  the  direct  ratio  of  in 
crease  in  the  power  of  association  and  combination,  the  motion 
of  a  community  towards  the  goal  of  its  desires  —  towards  that 
point  at  which  there  is  found  the  most  perfect  facility  for  combin 
ing  the  efforts  of  man  with  those  of  his  fellow-men — must  be  in  the 
direct  ratio  of  its  increase  in  numbers,  and  in  the  variety  of  their 
employments ;  and  with '  every  such  increase  the  necessity  for 
effecting  changes  of  place  tends  more  and  -more  to  pass  away. 
The  greater  that  variety,  and  the  more  perfect  the  commerce,  the 
greater  must  be  the  development  of  individuality,  the  higher  must 
become  the  feeling  of  responsibility,  and  the  greater  the  capacity 
for  further  progress.  The  more  rapid  the  motion  of  society,  the 
greater  must  be  its  tendency  to  take  upon  itself  that  form  which 
in  the  material  world  gives  the  greatest  stability  and  the  largest 
capacity  for  resistance  to  any  attack  from  without  —  that  form, 
consequently,  which  insures  the  greatest  durability. 

In  order  that  commerce  may  increase,  it  is  indispensable  that 
man  shall  be  enabled  to  pay  the  debt  he  contracts  towards  his 
great  mother  earth,  when  taking  from  the  soil  the  elements 
which  enter  into  the  composition  of  the  commodities  required  for 
his  support.  It  is  the  condition  upon  which  alone  progress  can 


OF    CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  281 

be  made.  When  it  is  complied  with,  she  increases  her  loans  from 
year  to  year  —  enabling  more  and  more  persons  to  obtain  both 
food  and  clothing,  with  constant  increase  of  power  to  combine 
their  efforts.  When  that  is  not  done,  motion  in  the  earth 
diminishes,  and  men  are  seen  gradually  increasing  their  dis 
tances  from  each  other,  with  steady  diminution  in  the  power  of 
association,  and  constant  increase  in  the  taxation  resulting  from 
the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place.  Such  we  see  to  have 
been  the  case  in  Greece  and  Italy,  in  Spain  and  Mexico ;  and 
such  we  now  see  it  to  be,  not  only  in  Virginia  and  the  Carolinas, 
but  even  in  the  comparatively  recently  occupied  States  of  Ohio, 
New  York,  and  Georgia.  Why  this  has  been  so  in  times  that 
are  past,  and  why  it  is  so  now,  requires  to  be  explained. 

To  the  men  who  live  by  the  work  of  appropriation,  increase  of 
commerce  is  not  desirable — its  growth  being  everywhere  attended 
by  diminution  in  the  splendor  and  magnificence  of  those  who  de 
sire  to  control  the  movements  of  society  with  a  view  to  their  own 
advantage.  The  politician  profits  by  the  separation  of  his  fellow- 
men,  and  so  is  it  with  the  lawyer,  the  trader,  the  great  proprie 
tor  of  badly-cultivated  land,  and  all  others  of  the  classes  whose 
means  of  support  and  illustration  are  derived  from  standing 
between  those  who  produce  commodities  and  those  who  require 
them  for  consumption.  All  these  men  profit,  temporarily,  by 
preventing  continuity  in  the  motion  of  society ;  and  the  greater 
their  power  so  to  do,  the  greater  is  the  proportion  of  the  pro 
duct  of  labor  that  enures  to  them,  and  the  smaller  that  which  re 
mains  to  be  divided  among  the  laborers. 

The  broker  does  not  desire  that  his  principals  may  come  toge 
ther,  and  arrange  their  affairs  without  his  intervention.  So  far, 
indeed,  is  it  to  the  contrary,  that  the  more  widely  they  are  sepa 
rated,  the  greater  is  his  power  to  accumulate  fortune  at  their 
expense  —  purchasing  for  himself,  to  their  injury,  when  prices  are 
low,  and  selling  for  himself,  again  at  the  cost  of  his  principals, 
when  prices  are  high.  The  owner  of  slaves  lives  by  preventing 
association  among  his  people — requiring  them  to  bring  to  him  all 
the  commodities  they  produce,  and  to  come  to  him  for  all  they 
need  to  consume.  The  wagoner  knows  that  the  more  numerous 
the  obstacles  between  the  producer  and  his  market,  the  greater 
will  be  the  demand  for  horses  and  wagons,  and  the  larger  will 

YOL.  I.—19 


282  CHAPTER    X.    §  6. 

be  the  proportion  of  the  commodities  retained  by  him  as  compen 
sation  for  his  services.  The  ship-owner  rejoices  when  men  are 
forced  to  separate  from  each  other,  as  in  the  case  of  the  late  Cri 
mean  war;  or  when  poverty  compels  them  to  abandon  their 
homes  and  fly  to  distant  lands  —  because  it  produces  a  demand 
for  ships.  Equally  does  he  rejoice  when  crops  are  large,  and  the 
quantity  seeking  transportation  steadily  accumulates  —  causing  a 
rise  of  freights.  The  real  and  permanent  interests  of  all  classes 
of  men  are  one  and  the  same,  but  their  apparent  and  temporary 
interests  are  different ;  and  therefore  it  is  that  we  see  individuals 
and  nations  constantly  engaged  in  pursuing  the  latter,  to  the  en 
tire  exclusion  of  the  former.  Blinded  by  the  idea  of  present  pro 
fit  and  grandeur,  the  great  men  of  Greece,  and  of  Rome,  over 
looked  the  fact  that  they  were  steadily  exhausting  the  powers  of 
the  community  of  which  they  formed  a  part ;  and,  blindly  follow 
ing  in  their  track,  those  of  Venice  and  Genoa,  France  and  Hol 
land,  Spain  and  Portugal,  have  pursued  a  course  precisely  similar, 
and  attended  always  with  the  same  results. 

So  has  it  been,  invariably,  with  the  trader,  whose  great  desire 
has  always  been,  to  maintain  at  their  highest  point,  and  even  to 
increase,  the  necessities  of  men  for  the  use  of  the  machinery  of 
transportation,  and  to  limit  them  to  the  use  of  that  of  which  he 
himself  was  owner.  The  more  completely  those  ends  could  be 
attained,  the  more  perfect  became  the  centralization  of  power  — 
the  more  splendid  became  the  places  at  which  exchanges  were 
required  to  be  made  —  and  the  greater  was  his  temporary  pros 
perity  ;  but  the  more  rapid  was  his  decline,  and  the  more  com 
plete  his  ruin.  The  Phoenicians  and  Carthaginians,  the  Venetians 
and  Genoese,  the  Spaniards  and  Portuguese,  the  Hanseatics  and 
their  rivals  of  Holland,  showed  themselves  at  all  times  unsparing 
in  their  efforts  to  compel  their  colonists  to  come  to  their  ports,  and 
to  use  their  ships.  While  seeking  thus  a  monopoly  of  power  as  a 
means  of  obtaining  wealth,  all  their  power  was  used  for  the  pur 
pose  of  maintaining  at  its  highest  point  the  burden  imposed  upon 
others  by  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place.  This, 
again,  gave  them  advantages  for  the  purchase  of  raw  produce,  by 
causing  its  accumulation  in  their  ports  —  subject,  of  course,  as  in 
the  present  day,  to  heavy  charges  and  great  risk ;  and  equal 
advantages  for  its  sale,  when  finished,  and  ready  for  consumption. 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER  IN   PLACE.  283 

Thus  did  they  enrich  themselves  for  the  moment,  while  greatb 
impoverishing  all  -dependent  upon  their  aid  —  precisely  as  we  see 
now  to  be  the  case  with  individuals  and  companies  trading  with 
the  poor  aborigines  of  this  western  continent ;  with  the  people  of 
Mexico  ;  with  the  Finns  and  Lapps  of  Northern  Europe,  the  na 
tives  of  the  Pacific,  and  of  Africa. 

Exhausting  the  people  with  whom  they  traded,  they  found  a 
perpetually  increasing  difficulty  in  the  maintenance  of  trade, 
because  of  constantly  increasing  famines  and  pestilences,  such  as 
now  so  frequently  occur  in  Ireland,  and  in  India.  As  popula 
tion  declined,  so  declined  the  power  to  maintain  the  roads  and 
bridges  by  which  to  go  to  market  —  whether  to  sell  the  wretched 
produce  of  their  lands,  or  to  purchase  the  things  required  for  con 
sumption — a  process  now  seen  in  operation  in  Jamaica  and  Ire 
land,  in  India,  and  in  Mexico  ;  in  all  of  which  the  variety  of  the 
products  of  the  land  is  constantly  diminishing,  with  correspond 
ent  tendency  to  diminution  in  their  quantity.  In  no  country  is 
this  more  emphatically  the  case  than  in  Turkey,  in  regard  to 
which  a  recent  traveller  says  that  ' '  in  each  district  the  great  bulk 
of  the  agricultural  classes  cultivate  the  same  articles  of  produce, 
and  pursue  the  same  routine  of  culture  ;  consequently,  every  man 
possesses  a  superfluity  of  the  articles  which  his  neighbor  is  desi 
rous  of  selling"*  —  being  precisely  the  state  of  things  existing  in 
Brazil  and  India,  Virginia  and  Carolina.  Under  such  circum 
stances — there  being  no  power  to  maintain  commerce  —  the  poor 
cultivator  finds  himself  subjected  to  the  "tender  mercies"  of  the 
trader,  whose  power  over  him  grows  with  the  decline  of  his  abi 
lity  to  maintain  intercourse  with  his  fellow-men  ;  and  therefore  it 
is,  that  he  is  there  so  much  enslaved. — Such  are  the  results  which 
follow  necessarily  from  rendering  man  an  instrument  to  be  used 
by  trade ;  but,  that  the  latter  fails  to  profit  by  such  injustice,  is 
proved  by  the  decline,  and  ultimate  fall,  of  the  communities  whose 
prosperity  has  been  due  exclusively  to  trade. 

§  T.  Freedom  grows  with  the  growth  of  the  power  of  association 
and  combination.     The  obstacle  to  association  is  that  resulting 
from  the  distance  between  men  and  their  fellow-men.     That  dis 
tance  diminishes  as  men  are  enabled  to  obtain  instruments  by 
*  Blackwood's  Magazine,  November,  1854. 


284  CHAPTER   X.    §7. 

help  of  which  to  command  the  services  of  nature,  and  to  deve  • 
lop  the  treasures  of  the  earth.  With  every  new  development, 
they  are  enabled  to  command  the  aid  of  better  machinery  to  be 
used  in  the  work  of  transportation,  while  steadily  diminishing 
the  necessity  for  transportation  —  with  constant  increase  in  the 
power  of  combination,  and  in  the  growth  of  freedom. 

Such,  however,  are  not  the  doctrines  of  modern  political  eco 
nomy —  of  the  system  which  is  based  upon  the  idea  of  the  "con 
stantly  increasing  sterility  of  the  soil,"  and  which  finds  in  tables 
of  imports  and  exports,  in  an  increased  demand  for  ships,  and  in 
a  growing  necessity  for  the  services  of  the  trader,  evidences  of 
national  prosperity  and  power.  Now,  as  when,  almost  a  century 
since,  the  idea  was  denounced  by  Adam  Smith,  "England's  Trea 
sure"  is  sought  in  the  "foreign  trade  ;"  and  "the  inland,  or  home 
trade,"  which  he  regarded  as  "the  most  important  of  all"  —  as 
the  one  "  in  which  an  equal  capital  afforded  the  greatest  returns, 
and  created  the  greatest  employment  to  the  people  of  the  coun 
try" —  is  considered  as  being  "only  subsidiary  to  the  foreign 
trade."*  To  what  extent  it  is,  that  we  owe  to  the  continued 
existence  of  this  essential  error,  the  invention  of  the  idea  of  over 
population,  the  reader  will  be  prepared  to  judge  after  an  exami 
nation  of  the  working  of  the  British  colonial  system. 

*  Wealth  of  Nations,  book  4,  chap.  1.  Mr.  McCulloch,  in  his  Discourse 
introductory  to  the  Wealth  of  Nations,  denounces  this  as  one  of  the  import 
ant  errors  of  its  author  —  contending  that  the  labor  employed  in  carrying 
goods  is  as  advantageous  as  that  given  to  their  production.  Dr.  Smith  loved 
Comirerce.  His  successors  glorify  Trade ;  and  therefore  is  it  that  the  latter 
are  led,  to  use  the  words  of  M.  Droz,  to  consider  men  as  having  been  "made 
for  products,  and  not  products  for  men." 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  285 


CHAPTER    XL 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT  CONTINUED. 

§  1.  THE  states  to  whose  policy  reference  has  thus  far  been 
made,  were  content  to  limit  themselves  to  restrictions  upon  the 
communities  within  their  control,  as  regarded  their  connections 
with  each  other,  and  with  other  communities  that  were  beyond  it 
—  without  attempting  in  any  manner  to  restrict  them  in  regard  to 
their  internal  arrangements.  The  early  Grecian  colonies  were  as 
free  to  maintain  commerce  at  home,  or  abroad,  as  were  the  states 
by  whose  citizens  they  had  been  founded ;  and  hence  it  is,  that 
there  was  seen  in  the  cities  of  Sicily,  and  of  Magna  Graecia,  the 
same  development  of  individuality  that  everywhere  else  distin 
guished  the  Grecian  civilization.  The  people  of  Spain,  Corsica, 
or  Sardinia  might,  if  they  would,  make  such  alterations  in  the 
forms  of  their  various  products  as  were  required  to  fit  them  for 
immediate  consumption ;  but,  if  they  desired  to  send  them  to 
Egypt,  or  to  Greece,  they  were  then  obliged  to  pass  them 
through  the  port  of  Carthage.  Spain  and  Portugal  denied  to 
the  Indies  the  right  of  trading  with  Holland,  or  with  England, 
except  through  the  ports  of  Seville  or  of  Lisbon  ;  but  they  never 
interfered  with  the  domestic  employments  of  Mexico,  or  of  Bra 
zil — of  the  people  of  Goa,  or  Manilla.  France  sought  to  establish 
colonies  in  the  Eastern  and  Western  Indies,  but  the  policy  of 
Colbert  was  based  upon  the  idea  of  developing  agriculture,  by 
means  of  manufactures,  and  of  commerce.  Far  otherwise  has  it 
been,  in  the  great  colonial  system  of  modern  times,  to  which  the 
attention  of  the  reader  will  now  be  asked  —  a  system  differing  as 
much  from  that  of  Greece,  as  did  that  of  early  Attica — which  gave 
to  colonists  the  enjoyment  of  all  the  rights  exercised  by  the  people 
of  the  parent  state  —  from  that  later  one,  which  annihilated  all 
local  institutions  by  making  the  populace  of  Athens  judges  in  the 
last  resort,  in  all  cases  affecting  tht  lives  and  fortunes  of  those 


286  CHAPTER  XI.    §  1. 

who  had  now,  from  the  position  of  fellow-citizens,  fallen  into  that 
of  subjects. 

In  the  colonial  system  of  England  it  is,  that  we,  for  the  first  time, 
meet  with  prohibitions  of  that  association  of  man  with  his  fellow- 
man  which  leads  to  the  development  of  the  individual  faculties — 
and  with  regulations  having  for  their  object  the  maintenance,  and 
at  its  highest  point,  of  the  difficulties  resulting  from  the  necessity 
for  effecting  changes  in  the  place  of  matter.  Nearly  two  centu 
ries  have  now  elapsed  since  the  merchants  of  London  prayed  their 
government  to  use  its  best  efforts  for  ' '  the  discouragement  of  the 
woollen  manufacture  of  Ireland ;"  in  order  thus  to  diminish  the 
habit  of  combined  action  which  was  then  rapidly  obtaining  in 
that  country,  and  to  prevent  in  future  the  consumption  of  Irish 
wool  until  it  should  first  have  passed  through  the  looms  of  Eng 
land.  Instead  of  converting  it  into  cloth  at  home,  they  were 
required  to  send  it  abroad  in  its  rudest  state,  and  receive  it  back 
again  in  a  finished  one  —  thereby  establishing  the  supremacy  of 
trade,  at  the  expense  of  commerce.  Already  interdicted  from 
all  direct  intercourse  with  foreigners,  the  same  interdiction  was 
now  extended  to  commerce  among  themselves  ;  and  thus  did  the 
system  go  far  ahead  of  all  that  previously  had  existed,  in  increas 
ing  the  necessity  for  transportation,  and  augmenting  the  difficulty 
of  association. 

Trade  becoming  paramount,  wars  were  waged  for  the  pur 
pose  of  obtaining  colonies;  or,  according  to  Adam  Smith,  for 
''raising  up  colonies  of  customers;"  for  the  accomplishment  of 
which  desire  it  was  required  that  all  attempts  at  local  association 
among  the  colonists  should  be  as  effectually  discouraged  as  they 
had  already  been  in  Ireland. 

That  they  were  so,  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  the  first  attempt  at 
manufacturing  any  species  of  cloth  in  the  American  provinces 
was  followed  by  interference  on  the  part  of  the  British  legisla 
ture.  In  1710,  the  House  of  Commons  declared,  "that  the 
erecting  of  manufactories  in  the  colonies  had  a  tendency  to  lessen 
their  dependence  on  Great  Britain. "  Shortly  after,  complaints 
being  made  to  Parliament  that  the  colonists  were  setting  up 
manufactories  for  themselves,  the  House  of  Commons  ordered  the 
Board  of  Trade  to  report  upon  the  subject,  as,  at  great  length, 
was  done.  In  1732,  the  exportation  of  hats  from  province  to 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  28T 

province  was  prohibited,  and  the  number  of  hatters'  apprentices 
was  limited  by  law.  In  1150,  the  erection  of  any  mill,  or  other 
engine,  for  splitting  or  rolling  iron,  was  prohibited  ;  but  pig  iron 
was  allowed  to  be  imported  into  England  duty  free,  that  it  might 
there  be  manufactured,  and  sent  back  again.  At  a  later  period, 
Lord  Chatham  declared,  that  he  would  not  allow  the  colonists  to 
make  even  a  hobnail  for  themselves.  Such  was  the  system  prac 
tised  towards  these  colonies.  That  in  relation  to  the  world  at 
large  is  found  in  the  following  list  of  acts  of  Parliament : — 

By  the  act,  5  George  III.,  [1165,]  the  exportation  of  artisans 
was  prohibited  under  a  heavy  penalty.  By  that  of  21  George 
III.,  [1181,]  the  exportation  of  utensils  required  for  the  manu 
facture  of  woollens  or  silk  was  likewise  prohibited.  By  that  of 
22  George  III.,  [1782,]  the  prohibition  was  extended  to  arti 
ficers  in  printing  calicoes,  cottons,  muslins,  or  linens,  or  in  mak 
ing  blocks  and  implements  to  be  used  in  their  manufacture.  By 
that  of  25  George  III.,  [1185,]  it  was  further  extended  to  tools 
used  in  the  iron  and  steel  manufactures,  and  to  the  workmen  em 
ployed  therein.  By  that  of  39  George  III.,  [1799,]  it  was  fur 
ther  extended  so  as  to  embrace  colliers.* 

These  laws  continued  in  full  force  until  thirty  years  since,  when, 
much  machinery  having  been  smuggled  abroad,  the  prohibition 
as  to  the  export  of  artisans  was  abolished;  and  all  those  relating 
to  that  of  machinery  were  so  far  relaxed,  that  permission  might 
be  had  for  the  exportation  of  all  the  more  common  articles  —  dis 
cretion  having  been  given  to  the  Board  of  Trade,  which  decides 
upon  each  application,  "  according  to  the  merits  of  the  case." 
But  little  difficulty  is  now,  it  is  said,  experienced  by  merchants, 
who  generally  know  as  to  what  machines  "the  indulgence  will  be 
extended,  and  from  what  it  will  be  withheld,"  almost  as  certainly 
as  if  it  had  been  settled  by  act  of  Parliament ;  yet  it  is  deemed  ad- 

*  "If  any  artificer  has  gone  beyond  the  seas,  and  is  exercising  or  teach 
ing  his  trade  in  any  foreign  country,  upon  warning  being  given  to  him  by 
any  of  his  majesty's  ministers,  or  consuls,  abroad,  or  by  one  of  his  majesty's 
secretaries  of  state  for  the  time  being,  if  he  does  not,  within  six  months  after 
such  warning,  return  into  this  realm,  and  from  thenceforth  abide  and  inha 
bit  within  the  same,  he  is  from  thenceforth  declared  incapable  of  taking  any 
legacy  devised  to  him  within  this  kingdom,  or  of  being  executor  or  adminis 
trator  to  any  person,  or  of  taking  any  lands  by  descent,  devise,  or  purchase. 
He  likewise  forfeits  to  the  king  all  his  lands,  goods,  and  chattels,  is  declared 
an  alien  in  every  respect,  and  is  put  out  of  the  king's  protection." — Wealth 
of  Nations,  book  4,  chap.  viii. 


288  CHAPTER   XI.    §  1. 

vantageous  to  have  it  left  discretionary  with  the  Board,  that  they 
may  have  ' '  the  power  of  regulating  the  matter,  according  to  the 
changing  interests  of  commerce."* 

The  whole  legislation  of  Great  Britain  on  this  subject  was  thus 
directed  to  the  one  great  object  of  preventing  the  people  of  her 
colonies,  and  those  of  independent  nations,  from  obtaining  machi 
nery  that  might  enable  them  to  combine  their  exertions  for  the 
purpose  of  obtaining  cloth  or  iron — and  thus  compelling  them  to 
bring  to  her  their  raw  materials,  that  she  might  convert  them  into 
the  commodities  required  for  consumption,  to  be  then,  in  part, 
returned  to  the  producers  —  burdened  with  heavy  charges  for  the 
work  of  transportation  and  conversion. 

The  wide  extent  of  the  British  empire,  and  the  extraordinary 
amount  of  influence  that  has  been  exercised  by  the  British  people, 
would,  under  any  circumstances,  have  rendered  its  system — dif 
fering,  as  it  does,  from  all  others  —  worthy  of  special  attention  by 
the  economist ;  but  the  necessity  therefor  is  greatly  increased  by 
the  fact,  that  it  is  to  the  country  by  which  that  policy  was  esta 
blished,  that  the  world  has  been  indebted  for  the  theory  of  over 
population.  That  theory  is  correct,  or  it  is  not.  Matter  tends 
to  take  upon  itself  the  form  of  man  in  a  ratio  more  rapid  than 
that  in  which  it  tends  to  take  that  of  potatoes  and  turnips ;  or 
it  tends  to  take  upon  itself  that  of  potatoes  and  turnips  in  a 
ratio  more  rapid  than  that  of  man.  That  the  former  is  the 
case,  and  that  we  should;  therefore,  discourage  the  growth  of 
population,  we  are  assured  by  all  the  English  economists ;  and, 
in  proof  that  such  are  the  facts,  we  are  pointed  to  the  misery  and 
destitution  of  both  Britain  and  Ireland  ;  but,  before  admitting  the 
existence  of  error  on  the  part  of  the  Creator,  it  is  proper  that  we 
examine  the  actions  of  his  creatures,  with  a  view  to  ascertain  to 
what  extent  it  is  to  them  that  this  state  of  things  is  due.  If  the 
natural  laws  are  really  such  as,  by  Messrs.  Malthus  and  Ricardo, 
they  are  said  to  be,  then,  the  more  thorough  the  investigation  of 
the  working  of  the  system  under  which  this  misery  and  destitution 
has  arisen,  the  more  completely  will  the  accuracy  of  those  gentle 
men,  and  their  reputation  as  social  philosophers,  be  established ; 
but,  if  they  are  wrong  —  if  no  such  natural  laws  exist — then  may 
careful  examination  enable  us  to  detect  the  cause  of  the  error  into 
*  PORTER:  Progress  of  the  Nation,  p.  163. 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  289 

which  they  fell.  In  making  it,  space  will  be  required,  and  for 
the  reason  that  TIME  constitutes  so  important  an  element  in  the 
problem  to  be  solved.  "  The  child  is,"  as  we  are  told,  "father 
to  the  man"  —  and,  in  like  manner,  the  communities  of  the  past 
are  fathers  to  those  of  the  present.  The  pauperism  of  England — 
to  the  study  of  which  the  idea  of  over-population  was  due  —  was 
the  growth  of  time  ;  and  if  we  desire  to  understand  the  causes  of  its 
existence,  we  must  examine  the  policy  of  that  country  for  the  half 
century  that  preceded  Mr.  Malthus,  and  the  one  which  has  since 
elapsed.  The  causes  of  the  existing  condition  of  Ireland  date 
back  hundreds  of  years ;  and  if  we  seek  to  understand  why  Ja 
maica  is  being  abandoned,  we  must  study  the  course  of  operation 
there  pursued  in  the  last  and  present  century. 

§  2.  The  one  great  need  of  man  is  that  of  combination  with 
his  fellow-men  ;  and  the  one  great  obstacle  to  its  accomplishment 
is,  as  the  reader  has  already  seen,  the  absence  of  those  differences 
which  result  from  diversity  of  employments,  and  fit  him  for  asso 
ciation.  The  object  that,  by  means  of  the  laws  above  referred  to, 
was  sought  to  be  obtained,  was  the  prevention  of  the  existence  of 
those  differences,  and  the  perpetuation  of  a  state  of  society  in 
which  the  people  of  other  lands  should  continue  mere  tillers  of  the 
earth — compelled  to  constant  exhaustion  of  the  soil,  by  reason  of 
the  necessity  for  sending  abroad  their  commodities  in  the  rudest 
forms,  to  be  worked  up  abroad  —  and  constant  exhaustion  of 
themselves,  consequent  upon  the  enormous  transportation  to 
which  they  thus  were  subjected.  This,  in  its  turn,  involved  dis 
persion  —  constantly  increasing  by  reason  of  the  perpetually  in 
creasing  necessity  for  resorting  to  new  and  more  distant  soils ; 
with  constant  increase  in  the  proportion  of  the  labor  of  the  com 
munity  required  to  be  given  to  the  works  of  trade  and  transporta 
tion,  and  diminution  in  the  proportion  that  could  be  given  to 
producing  commodities  to  be  transported  or  exchanged.  It  was, 
in  effect,  the  sacrifice  of  commerce  at  the  shrine  of  trade,  and 
tended,  necessarily,  to  the  enslavement  of  man  in  all  the  commu 
nities  in  which  it  could  be  enforced.* 


*  That  the  objects  of  the  system  were  precisely  -what  is  here  described,  is 
shown  in  the  following  passages  from  a  work  of  authority  in  its  day  —  Gee 
on  Trade,  published  in  1750: — 


290  CHAPTER    XI.    §  2. 

The  harmony  of  the  system  of  which  our  planet  forms  a  part  is 
due  to  the  existence  of  local  gravitation,  by  help  of  which  each 
and  every  of  its  members  is  enabled  to  preserve  its  perfect  indi 
viduality,  although  exposed  to  attraction  so  mighty  in  extent  as 
is  that  exerted  by  the  sun.  So  long  as  those  forces  continue  in 
equal  balance,  harmony  will  be  preserved  ;  but  should  the  central 
force  ever,  even  for  a  moment,  predominate  over  the  local  ones, 
every  planet  would  fall  at  once  to  ruin,  and  universal  chaos  would 
be  the  inevitable  consequence.  Such,  too,  should  be  the  result  of 
excess  of  centralization  in  the  social  world,  and  that  it  has  been  so, 
is  shown  by  the  experience  of  Athens  and  Rome,  Carthage  and 
Venice  ;  and  yet,  the  centralization  sought  to  be  effected  by  their 

"Manufactures  in  American  colonies  should  be  discouraged,  prohibited." 

*  *         *         "  We  ought  always  to  keep  a  watchful  eye  over  our  colo 
nies,  to  restrain  them  from  setting  up  any  of  the  manufactures  which  are  carried 
on  in  Great  Britain ;  and  any  such  attempts  should  be  crushed  in  the  begin 
ning,  for  if  they  are  suffered  to  grow  up  to  maturity,  it  will  be  difficult  to 
suppress  them."         »•»*•«  Our  colonies  are  much  in  the  same 
state  as  Ireland  was  in  when  they  began  the  woollen  manufactory,  and  as 
their  numbers  increase,  will  fall  upon  manufactures  for  clothing  themselves,  if  due 
care  be  not  taken  to  find  employment  for  them  in  raising  such  productions  as 
may  enable  them  to  furnish  themselves  with  all  the  necessaries  from  us."     * 

*  *         "As  they  will  have  the  providing  rough  materials  to  themselves, 
so  shall  we  have  the  manufacturing  of  them.     If  encouragement  be  given  for 
raising  hemp,  flax,  &c.,  doubtless  they  will  soon  begin  to  manufacture,  if  not 
prevented.     Therefore,  to  stop  the  progress  of  any  such  manufacture,  it  is 
proposed  that  no  weaver  have  liberty  to  set  up  any  looms,  without  first  regis 
tering  at  an  office  kept  for  that  purpose,  and  the  name  and  place  of  abode 
of  any  journeyman  that  shall  work  for  him.''  "  That 
all  slitting-mills,  and  engines  for  drawing  wire  or  weaving  stockings,  be  put 
down."         *         *         *         "  That  all  negroes  shall  be  prohibited  from  weav 
ing  either  linen  or  woollen,  or  spinning  or  combing  of  wool,  or  working  at  any 
manufacture  of  iron,  further  than  making  it  into  pig  or  bar  iron.     That  they 
also  be  prohibited  from  manufacturing  hals,  stockings,  or  leather  of  any  kind. 
This  limitation  will  not  abridge  the  planters  of  any  liberty  they  now  enjoy — 
on  the  contrary,  it  will  then  turn  their  industry  to  promoting  and  raising 
those  rough  materials."         *         *         *         "  If  we  examine  into  the  cir 
cumstances  of  the  inhabitants  of  our  plantations,  and  our  own,  it  will  appear 
that  not  one-fourth  part  of  their  product  redounds  to  their  own  profit,  for,  out  of 
alt  that  comes  here,  they  only  carry  back  clothing  and  other  accommodations  for 
their  families,  all  of  which  is  of  the  merchandise  and  manufacture  of  this 
kingdom."         *         *         *         "All  these  advantages  we  receive  by  the 
plantations,  besides  the  mortgages  on  the  planters'  estates  and  the  high  interest 
they  pay  us,  which  is  very  considerable;  and,  therefore,  very  great  care  ought 
to  be  taken,  in  regulating  all  the  affairs  of  the  colonists,  that  the  planters 
are  not  put  under  too  many  difficulties,  but  encouraged  to  go  on  cheerfully." 

*  *  #  "New  England  and  the  northern  colonies  have  not 
commodities  and  products  enough  to  send  us  in  return  for  purchasing  their 
necessary  clothing,  but  are  under  very  great  difficulties ;  and,  therefore,  any 
ordinary  sort  sell  with  them  ;  and  when  they  have  grown  out  of  fashion  with 
us,  they  are  new-fashioned  enough  for  them." 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  291 

systems  of  policy  was  to  the  last  degree  unimportant  when  com 
pared  with  that  endeavored  to  be  produced  by  the  system  above 
described.  In  their  cases  it  was  commerce  with  distant  men, 
alone,  that  was  to  be  impeded  ;  but  here  it  was  the  greatest  of  all 
commerce — commerce  at  home — the  power  of  association,  and  all 
development  of  individuality,  that  were  to  be  annihilated.  For 
the  accomplishment  of  that  object  no  effort  was  omitted.  Commo 
dities  in  a  crude  state,  subject  to  heavy  charges  for  transportation, 
as  in  the  case  of  paddy  (or  rough  rice)  and  sugar,  were  admitted 
at  low  duties ;  whereas  clean  rice  and  refined  sugar  were  charged 
with  duties  so  heavy  as  to  offer  a  large  bounty  in  favor  of  their 
export  from  India  or  the  West  Indies  in  the  crudest  shape  —  and 
even  then  they  could  be  sent  to  the  world  only  through  an  Eng 
lish  port,  or  an  English  ship. 

Prohibitions  of  manufactures,  on  one  hand,  and  bounties  on 
the  import  of  raw  materials,  on  the  other,  were  thus  resorted  to, 
with  a  view  to  prevent  the  colonists  from  making  those  changes  in 
the  forms  of  matter  that  were  required  for  fitting  the  products  of 
the  earth  for  consumption  among  themselves.  The  one  great  object 
of  the  system  was  that  of  maintaining  in  its  most  bulky  form  the 
commodity  requiring  to  be  transported,  while  diminishing  to  the 
smallest  size  the  machinery  by  which  the  work  of  transportation 
and  conversion  was  to  be  effected  —  thereby  enriching  the  trader 
and  transporter  at  the  cost  of  both  consumer  and  producer.  The 
more  perfectly  it  could  be  carried  out,  the  smaller  would  be  the 
quantity  of  cloth  obtainable  by  the  man  who  produced  sugar ; 
the  smaller  would  be  the  quantity  of  sugar  obtainable  by  him  to 
whose  labor  the  cloth  was  due ;  the  greater  would  be  the  tend 
ency  to  have  the  appearance  of  population  pressing  on  the  limits 
of  subsistence  ;  and  the  greater  would  be  the  tendency  to  find  in 
erroneous  arrangements  of  the  Creator  an  apology  for  a  state  of 
affairs  whose  existence  was  due  solely  to  the  contrivances  of  man. 

§  3.  Society,  association,  and  commerce  are,  as  has  been 
shown,  but  different  forms  of  expression  for  the  same  idea  —  and 
that  idea  the  first  of  all  the  needs  of  man.  Without  association 
there  can  be  no  society,  and  without  society  there  can  be  no  com 
merce.  .All  of  these  words  describe  the  motion  among  men 
resulting  from  exchange  of  services  or  ideas,  the  products  of  inus- 


292  CHAPTER  XI.    §  3. 

cular  or  intellectual  effort.  The  more  perfect  the  form  of  society, 
the  greater  will  always  be  the  differences  among  its  parts,  the 
more  continuous  and  regular  will  be  their  motion  among  each 
other,  and  the  greater  will  be  the  force  exerted.  So  is  it  with  all 
the  machinery  contrived  by  man  for  the  purpose  of  subduing  to  his 
service  the  wonderful  forces  of  nature.  The  marvels  accomplished 
by  the  steam-engine  are  great  —  so  great,  that  they  would  be 
deemed  wholly  incredible  by  a  man  who  had  passed  from  the 
world  half  a  century  since ;  and  yet,  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  fix 
a  price  that  might  not  now  be  paid  for  the  secret  of  a  perfectly 
acting  rotary  engine,  because  by  its  help  the  rapidity  of  motion 
could  be  still  so  much  increased.  It  is  the  continuous  motion  of 
society  that  is  sought  for  by  men  when  they  prefer  to  arrange 
business  face  to  face,  by  means  of  conversation,  in  preference  to 
the  constantly  intermitting  motion  of  correspondence.  It  is  that 
motion  which  is  sought  by  every  inventor  of  a  machine  —  every 
mill-owner — every  man,  in  fact,  that  desires  to  increase  his  power 
over  the  natural  forces  furnished  for  the  use  of  man.  It  is  that 
motion  which  is  described  by  Adam  Smith  in  the  following  pas 
sages,  given  thus  at  length,  because  their  illustrious  author  is  so 
frequently  quoted  as  authority  for  the  system  that  looks  to  the 
building  up  of  trade  at  the  cost  of  commerce  : — 

''An  inland  country,  naturally  fertile  and  easily  cultivated, 
produces  a  great  surplus  of  provisions  beyond  what  is  necessary 
for  maintaining  the  cultivators ;  and  on  account  of  the  expense 
of  land  carriage,  and  inconveniency  of  river  navigation,  it  may 
frequently  be  difficult  to  send  this  surplus  abroad.  Abundance, 
therefore,  renders  provisions  cheap,  and  encourages  a  great  num 
ber  of  workmen  to  settle  in  the  neighborhood,  who  find  that  their 
industry  can  there  procure  them  more  of  the  necessaries  and  con 
veniences  of  life  than  in  other  places.  They  work  up  the  mate 
rials  of  manufacture  which  the  land  produces,  and  exchange  their 
finished  work,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  the  price  of  it,  for  more 
materials  and  provisions.  They  give  a  new  value  to  the  surplus 
part  of  the  rude  produce,  by  saving  the  expense  of  carrying  it 
to  the  water-side  or  to  some  distant  market ;  and  they  furnish  the 
cultivators  with  something  in  exchange  for  it,  that  is  either  useful 
or  agreeable  to  them,  upon  easier  terms  than  they  could  have  ob 
tained  it  before.  The  cultivators  get  a  better  price  for  their  sur- 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  293 

plus  produce,  and  can  purchase  cheaper  other  conveniences  which 
they  have  occasion  for.  They  are  thus  both  encouraged  and 
enabled  to  increase  this  surplus  produce  by  a  further  improvement 
and  better  cultivation  of  the  land ;  and  as  the  fertility  of  the  land 
has  given  birth  to  the  manufacture,  so  the  progress  of  the  manu 
facture  reacts  upon  the  land,  and  increases  still  further  its  fertility. 
The  manufacturers  first  supply  the  neighborhood,  and  afterwards, 
as  their  work  improves  and  refines,  more  distant  markets.  For, 
though  neither  the  rude  produce,  nor  even  the  coarse  manufac 
ture,  could,  without  the  greatest  difficulty,  support  the  expense 
of  a  considerable  land  carriage,  the  refined  and  improved  ma 
nufacture  easily  may.  In  a  small  bulk  it  frequently  contains 
the  price  of  a  great  quantity  of  the  raw  produce.  A  piece  of 
fine  cloth,  for  example,  which  weighs  only  eighty  pounds,  con 
tains  in  it  the  price,  not  only  of  eighty  pounds  of  wool,  but  some 
times  of  several  thousand  weight  of  corn,  the  maintenance  of  the 
different  working  people,  and  of  their  immediate  employers. 
The  corn  which  could  with  difficulty  have  been  carried  abroad  in 
its  own  shape,  is  in  this  manner  virtually  exported  in  that  of  the 
complete  manufacture,  and  may  easily  be  sent  to  the  remotest  cor 
ners  of  the  world.  In  this  manner  have  grown  up  naturally,  and, 
as  it  were,  of  their  own  accord,  the  manufactures  of  Leeds,  Hali 
fax,  Sheffield,  Birmingham,  and  Wolverhampton.  Such  manu 
factures  are  the  offspring  of  agriculture."* 

' '  The  great  commerce  of  every  civilized  society  is  that  carried 
on  between  the  inhabitants  of  the  town  and  those  of  the  country.  , 
It  consists  in  the  exchange  of  rude  for  manufactured  produce, 
either  immediately,  or  by  the  intervention  of  money,  or  of  some 
sort  of  paper  which  represents  money.  The  country  supplies  the 
town  with  the  means  of  subsistence  and  the  materials  of  manufac 
ture.  The  town  repays  this  supply,  by  sending  back  a  part  of 
the  manufactured  produce  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  country.  The 
town,  in  which  there  neither  is,  nor  can  be,  any  reproduction  of 
substances,  may  very  properly  be  said  to  gain  its  whole  wealth 
and  subsistence  from  the  country.  We  must  not,  however,  upon 
this  account,  imagine  that  the  gain  of  the  town  is  the  loss  of  the 
country.  The  gains  of  both  are  mutual  and  reciprocal,  and  the 
division  of  labor  is  in  this,  as  in  all  other  cases,  advantageous  to 
*  Wealth  of  Nations,  book  3,  chap.  iii. 


294  CHAPTER  XT.    §  3. 

all  the  different  persons  employed  in  the  various  occupations  into 
which  it  is  subdivided.  The  inhabitants  of  the  country  purchase 
of  the  town  a  greater  quantity  of  manufactured  goods  with  the 
produce  of  a  much  smaller  quantity  of  their  own  labor,  than  they 
must  have  employed  had  they  attempted  to  prepare  them  them 
selves.  The  town  affords  a  market  for  the  surplus  produce  of  the 
country,  or  what  is  over  and  above  the  maintenance  of  the  culti 
vators  ;  and  it  is  there  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  ex 
change  it  for  something  else  which  is  in  demand  among  them. 
The  greater  the  number  and  revenue  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
town,  the  more  extensive  is  the  market  which  it  affords  to  those 
of  the  country  ;  and  the  more  extensive  that  market,  it  is  always 
the  more  advantageous  to  a  great  number.  The  corn  which 
grows  within  a  mile  of  the  town  sells  there  for  the  same  price  with 
that  which  comes  from  twenty  miles  distance.  But  the  price  of 
the  latter  must,  generally,  not  only  pay  the  expense  of  raising  it 
and  bringing  it  to  market,  but  afford,  too,  the  ordinary  profits 
of  agriculture  to  the  farmer.  The  proprietors  and  cultivators  of 
the  country,  therefore,  which  lies  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
town,  over  and  above  the  ordinary  profits  of  agriculture,  gain,  in 
the  price  of  what  they  sell,  the  whole  value  of  the  carriage  of  the 
like  produce  that  is  brought  from  more  distant  parts ;  and  they 
save,  besides,  the  whole  value  of  this  carriage  in  the  price  of  what 
they  buy.  Compare  the  cultivation  of  the  lands  in  the  neighbor 
hood  of  any  considerable  town,  with  that  of  those  which  lie  at 
some  distance  from  it,  and  you  will  easily  satisfy  yourself  how 
much  the  country  is  benefited  by  the  commerce  of  the  town."* 

The  motion  here  described  is  properly  characterized  as  com 
merce.  The  plain  good  sense  of  Adam  Smith  enabled  him 
clearly  to  comprehend  the  error  of  the  system  which  found  in 
exports  and  imports  the  only  index  to  prosperity ;  and  also,  fully 
to  understand  the  enormous  waste  of  labor  resulting  from  impds- 
ing  upon  communities  a  necessity  for  exporting  wool,  corn,  cot 
ton,  and  other  products  of  the  earth,  in  their  rudest  shape,  to  be 
returned  again  in  the  form  of  cloth.  He  was  no  believer  in  cen 
tralization  of  any  kind.  Least  of  all  did  he  believe  in  that 
which  looked  to  compelling  all  the  farmers  and  planters  to 
go  to  a  single  market,  and  to  augmenting  the  necessity  for  de- 

*Ibid. 


OF    CHANGES    OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  295 

pendence  on  wagons  and  ships  —  while  increasing  the  profits  of 
trade,  and  the  proportion  of  every  population  required  to  be  em 
ployed  in  the  work  of  effecting  changes  of  place.  On  the  con 
trary,  he  had  full  and  entire  faith  in  the  system  of  local  centres  by 
help  of  which,  as  he  so  clearly  saw,  commerce  had  been  every 
where  so  much  developed  —  and  that  was  the  system  to  whose 
advantage  he  desired  to  call  the  attention  of  his  countrymen; 
From  that  hour  to  the  present,  however,  the  system  he  denounced 
has  been  pursued — all  the  efforts  of  his  countrymen  having  been 
directed  towards  producing  the  effect  of  continuing  at  its  highest 
point  the  tax  of  transportation ;  and  here  it  is,  perhaps,  that  we 
may  find  the  cause  of  the  idea  of  over-population. 

§  4.  From  the  date  of  the  conquest  of  the  several  WEST  INDIA 
COLONIES,  manufactures  of  every  kind  were  strictly  prohibited  — 
the  interdiction  being  carried  so  far  that  their  inhabitants  were  not 
permitted  even  to  refine  their  own  sugar.  There  was,  of  course, 
no  employment,  even  for  women  and  children,  but  in  the  labors 
of  the  field.  All  were  required  to  remain  producers  of  raw  com 
modities —  maintaining  no  commerce  among  themselves,  except 
through  the  intervention  of  a  people  thousands  of  miles  distant, 
who  used  their  power  to  such  effect  as  not  only  to  prohibit 
manufactures,  but  also  to  prevent  diversification  of  employment 
in  agriculture  itself.  In  Jamaica,  indigo  had  been  tried,  but  of 
the  price  for  which  it  sold  in  England  so  large  a  portion  proved 
to  be  absorbed  by  ship-owners,  commission-merchants,  and  the 
government,  that  its  culture  had  been  abandoned.  Coffee  was 
extensively  introduced,  and  as  it  grows  on  higher  and  more  salu 
brious  lands,  its  cultivation  would  have  been  of  great  advantage 
to  the  community ;  but  here,  as  in  the  case  of  indigo,  so  small  a 
portion  of  its  price  was  received  by  the  producer,  that  its  pro 
duction  was  almost  abandoned,  and  was  saved  only  by  an  agree 
ment  to  reduce  the  claims  of  government  to  a  shilling  a  pound. 
The  estimated  produce  being  about  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  of  merchantable  coffee,  this  amounted  to  about  $180  per 
acre.  *  The  ultimate  effect  of  the  system  was  that  of  terminating 
all  commerce  among  the  people  —  even  that  which  previously  had 
existed  between  those  who  raised  coffee,  on  the  one  hand,  and  those 
*  Dallas's  History  of  the  Maroons,  vol.  i.  page  c 


296  CHAPTER   IX.     §  4. 

who  had  sugar  to  dispose  of,  on  the  other  —  all  cultivation  but 
that  of  the  sugar-cane,  the  one  most  destructive  of  life  and  health, 
being  entirely  abandoned. 

While  commerce  among  themselves  was  thus  prohibited,  all 
intercourse  with  foreign  nations  was  interdicted,  except  through 
the  medium  of  British  ships,  ports,  and  merchants.  The  trade 
direct  with  Africa,  however,  was  sanctioned,  for  it  furnished 
slaves ;  and  this  traffic  was  continued  on  a  most  extensive  scale  — 
most  of  the  demand  for  the  Spanish  colonies  being  supplied  from 
the  British  islands.  In  It 75,  however,  the  colonial  legislature, 
desirous  to  prevent  the  excessive  importation  of  negroes,  imposed 
a  duty  of  £2  per  head  ;  but  this  being  petitioned  against  by  the 
merchants  of  England,  the  home  government  directed  its  dis 
continuance.*  At  this  period,  the  annual  export  of  sugar  is 
statedf  to  have  been  980,346  hundredweights,  the  gross  sales  of 
which,  duty  free,  averaged  £1  14s.  Sd.  per  hundred  —  making  a 
total  of  £1,699,421 ;  so  large  a  portion  of  which,  however,  was 
absorbed  by  freight,  commissions,  insurance,  &c.,  that  the  net 
proceeds  of  seven  hundred  and  seventy-five  sugar  estates  are 
stated  to  have  been  only  £726,992,  or  less  than  £1000  each.  If 
to  the  £973,000  thus  deducted,  be  now  added  the  share  of  the 
government,  (12s.  3d.  per  hundredweight,)  and  the  further 
charges  before  the  sugar  reached  the  consumer,  it  will  be  seen 
that  the  producer  received  but  a  fourth  of  the  price  at  which  it 
sold.  The  planter  was,  therefore,  little  more  than  a  superintend 
ent  of  slaves,  who  were  worked  for  the  benefit  of  the  merchants 
and  the  government  of  Great  Britain,  and  not  for  his  own. 
Placed  between  the  slave,  whom  he  was  obliged  to  support,  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  mortgagee,  the  merchants  and  the  govern 
ment,  whom  he  was  also  obliged  to  support,  on  the  other,  he  could 
take  for  himself  only  what  was  left ;  and  when  the  crop  proved 
large,  and  prices  fell,  he  was  ruined.  The  consequences  of  this 
are  seen  in  the  fact,  that  in  the  twenty  years  following  this  period, 
there  were  sold  by  the  sheriff  no  less  than  one  hundred  and 
seventy-seven  estates ;  while  ninety -two  remained  unsold  in  the 
hands  of  creditors,  and  fifty-five  were  wholly  abandoned.  Seeing 
these  things,  it  is  not  difficult  to  understand  the  cause  of  the  extra 
ordinary  waste  of  life  exhibited  in  the  British  islands.  The  plan- 
*  Macpherson,  vol.  iii.  p.  574.  f  Ibid.  vol.  iv.  p.  255. 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  297 

ter,  unable  to  accumulate  machinery  by  help  of  which  to  command 
the  services  of  nature,  was  obliged  to  depend  upon  brute  force 
alone ;  and  it  was  easier  for  him  to  buy  such  force,  ready  made, 
on  the  coast  of  Africa,  than  to  have  it  made  on  his  own  planta 
tion.  Hence  it  was,  that  a  constant  supply  of  negroes  was 
required  for  keeping  up  the  population  —  and  hence  it  has  been, 
that  of  all  who  had  been  imported,  little  more  than  one  in  three 
was  represented  on  the  day  of  emancipation.* 

The  planter  himself,  however,  was  nearly  as  much  a  slave  as  the 
negro  he  had  purchased.  Ever  in  debt,  his  property  was  gene 
rally  in  the  hands  of  middlemen  representing  the  parties  to  whom 
he  was  indebted  —  the  factors  in  England,  who  accumulated  for 
tunes  at  his  expense,  and  whose  agents  in  the  islands  enriched 
themselves  at  the  cost  of  the  nominal  owner  of  the  land,  on  one 
hand,  and  of  the  slaves  by  whom  it  was  worked,  on  the  other,  f 
At  the  period  above  referred  to,  such  persons,  one  hundred  and 
ninety-three  in  number,  held  in  charge  no  less  than  six  hundred 
and  six  works — yielding  eighty  thousand  hogsheads  of  sugar,  and 
thirty-six  hundred  puncheons  of  rum,  the  value  of  which  might  be 
taken  at  £4,000,000,  upon  which  they  were  entitled  to  six  per 
cent.  The  more,  however,  the  planter  was  distressed,  the  more 
the  attorney  fattened  —  and  thus  have  we  here  a  state  of  things 
precisely  similar  to  that  existing  in  Ireland,  where  absentees' 
estates  were  managed  by  middlemen  having  no  interest  in  the 
land,  or  in  the  virtual  slaves  upon  it ;  and  anxious  only  to 
take  from  both  all  that  could  be  taken  —  giving  as  little  as  pos 
sible  back  to  either.  In  both,  centralization,  absenteeism,  and 
slavery  walked  hand  in  hand  together,  as  they  had  done  in  the 
days  of  the  Scipios,  the  Catos,  the  Pompeys,  and  the  Ceesars. 

To  what,  however,  was  this  absenteeism  due  ?  Why  was  it 
that  in  Jamaica,  as  well  as  in  Ireland,  the  land-owners  did  not 
reside  on  their  estates  —  attending  personally  to  their  manage 
ment  ?  Because  the  policy  which  forbade  that  even  the  sugar 

*  The  total  number  imported  into  the  British  islands  cannot  have  been 
less  than  1,700,000;  and  yet  the  number  at  the  date  of  emancipation  was 
but  660,000.  The  number  imported  into  the  United  States  cannot  have  ex 
ceeded  half  a  million ;  but  they  have  grown  to  three  and  a  half  millions. 

f  The  reader  who  desires  fully  to  understand  the  waste  and  robbery  of  a 
British  West  Indian  plantation,  the  slavery  of  its  owner,  and  the  causes  of 
the  exhaustion  of  those  fertile  islands,  may  do  so  by  consulting  the  History 
of  the  Maroons,  by  R.  C.  DALLAS,  2  vols.  8vo:  London,  1803. 

VOL.  I.— 20 


298  CHAPTER   XI.    §  4. 

itself  should  be  refined  on  the  island  —  and  thus  limited  the  whole 
population,  old  and  young,  male  and  female,  to  the  mere  culture 
of  sugar — effectually  prevented  the  growth  of  any  middle  class  to 
form  the  population  of  towns  in  which  the  planter  might  find  the 
society  required  for  inducing  him  to  regard  the  island  as  his  home. 
In  the  French  islands,  all  was  different.  The  French  government 
never  having  interfered  to  prevent  the  growth  of  commerce  among 
their  colonists,  towns  had  grown  up,  and  men  of  all  descriptions  had 
come  from  France  —  intending  to  make  of  the  islands  their  home ; 
whereas,  the  English  colonists  looked  only  to  realizing  fortunes, 
and  then  returning  to  England  to  spend  them.  The  one  system 
looked  to  the  development  of  individuality  and  the  promotion  of 
commerce ;  whereas,  the  other  looked  to  the  destruction  of  both. 

Widely  different  were  the  systems,  and  as  widely  so  have  been 
the  results  —  the  French  islands  presenting  everywhere  evidence 
of  their  being  occupied  by  men  who  feel  themselves  at  home,  and 
the  English  ones  offering  almost  everywhere  evidence  of  having 
been  occupied  by  men  bent  on  extracting  from  the  land  and  the 
laborer  all  that  could  be  obtained,  and  then  abandoning  the  one 
and  burying  the  other.  In  the  one  were  to  be  found  shops  of 
every  kind,  at  which  clothing,  books,  jewellery,  and  other  commo 
dities,  could  be  obtained;  whereas,  in  the  other — no  such  shops 
existing — those  who  had  purchases  to  make,  were  obliged  to  im 
port  directly  from  England.  In  the  one,  there  was  combination 
of  effort. —  commerce,  society;  whereas,  in  the  other,  there  was 
only  trade.* 

Under  such  a  system  no  towns  could  arise,  and  therefore  could 
there  be  no  schools.  Hence  it  was,  that  the  planter  was  forced 
to  send  his  children  to  England  to  be  educated ;  there  to  con 
tract  a  love  for  European,  and  a  dislike  for  colonial,  life.  At 
death,  his  property  passed,  as  a  matter  of  course,  into  the  hands 
of  agents  —  of  men  whose  profits  were  to  be  augmented  by  in 
crease  of  shipments,  at  whatever  cost  of  life  obtained.  Such  was 
the  natural  result  of  a  policy  which  denied  to  the  men,  the  women, 
and  the  children  the  privilege  of  giving  themselves  to  any  in-door 
pursuits — the  mechanic  not  being  needed  where  machinery  could 
not  be  used,  and  the  town  being  unable  to  grow  where  there  could 
be  neither  artisans  nor  schools. 

*  COLERIDGE:  Six  Months  in  the  West  Indies,  p.  131. 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER  IN   PLACE.  299 

The  export  of  rum  generally  brought  the  planter  in  debt — that  is, 
more  than  the  whole  amount  for  which  it  sold  was  absorbed  in  the 
various  charges  upon  it.  The  people  of  England  paid  a  million 
of  pounds  sterling  for  a  certain  product  of  the  laborers  of  Jamaica, 
not  a  shilling  of  which  ever  reached  the  planter  to  be  applied  to 
the  amelioration  of  his  estate,  to  the  improvement  of  his  cultiva 
tion,  or  to  the  advantage  of  the  people  by  whom  the  work  was 
performed.*  The  reader  will  thus  see  that  Mr.  Gee  did  not  ex 
aggerate,  when  he  gave  it  as  one  of  the  recommendations  of  the 
colonial  system,  that  the  colonists  left  in  England  three-fourths  of 
all  their  products  —  the  difference  being  swallowed  up  by  those 
who  made  or  superintended  the  exchanges.  Such  was  the  result 
desired  by  those  who  compelled  the  planter  to  depend  on  a  dis 
tant  market  in  which  to  sell  all  he  raised,  and  to  purchase  all  he 
required  to  consume.  The  more  he  took  from  his  land,  the  more 
it  was  exhausted,  and  the  less  he  obtained  for  its  products — large 
crops  swelling  greatly  the  amount  of  freights,  storages,  commis 
sions,  and  profits,  while  as  much  depressing  prices  ;  as  we  see  to 
be  now  the  case  with  cotton.  The  more  his  land  was  being 
ruined,  and  his  slaves  were  being  destroyed,  the  less,  consequently, 
was  his  power  to  purchase  machinery  by  help  of  which  to  increase 
the  powers  of  either.  A  slave  himself  to  those  by  whom  his 
labors  were  directed,  it  would  be  unfair  to  attribute  to  him  the 
extraordinary  waste  of  life  resulting  necessarily  from  the  fact  that 
a  whole  people  was  thus  limited  to  the  labor  of  the  field,  and 
deprived  of  all  power  for  the  maintenance  of  commerce. 

With  inexhaustible  supplies  of  timber,  the  island  possessed, 
even  in  1850,  not  a  single  saw-mill  —  although  affording  an  exten- 

*  The  rum  sold  on  its  arrival  at  3s.  or  3s.  6d.  a  gallon,  but  the  consumer 
paid  for  it  probably  17*.,  which  were  thus  divided : — 

Government,  representing  the  British  people  at  large lls.  3d. 

Ship-owners,  wholesale  and  retail  dealers,  &c 5     9 

Land-owner  and  laborer 0    0 

17s. 

If  we  look  to  sugar,  we  find  a  result  somewhat  better,  but  of  similar  cha 
racter.  The  English  consumer  gave  for  it  80*.  worth  of  labor,  and  those 
shillings  were  nearly  thus  divided: — 

Government 27*. 

Ship-owner,  merchant,  mortgagee,  &c. 33 

Land-owner  and  laborer 20 

soT 


300  CHAPTER   XI.    §  4. 

sive  market  for  lumber  from  abroad.  Yielding,  in  the  greatest 
abundance,  the  finest  fruits,  there  were  yet  no  towns-people,  with 
their  ships,  to  carry  them  to  the  markets  of  this  country ;  and 
for  want  of  markets,  they  rotted  under  the  trees.  "  The  manufac 
turing  resources  of  this  island,"  says  a  recent  traveller,  "are  inex 
haustible  ;"*  ancfso  have  they  always  been,  but,  deprived  of  the 
power  of  combination,  its  people  have  been  compelled  to  waste 
power  that,  if  properly  employed,  would  have  paid,  a  hundred 
times  over,  for  all  the  commodities  for  which  they  were  required 
look  to  the  distant  market.  "  For  six  or  eight  months  in  the 
year,"  as  he  further  says,  "nothing  is  done  on  the  sugar  or  coffee 
plantations."  "Agriculture,  as  at  present  conducted,  does  not 
occupy  more  than  half  their  time" — nor  has  it  ever  done  so  ;  and 
it  is  in  this  waste  of  labor,  consequent  upon  the  absence  of  diver 
sification  of  employment,  that  we  are  to  find  the  cause  of  poverty 
and  decline. 

Population  diminished,  because  there  could  be  no  improvement 
in  the  condition  of  the  laborer,  who,  while  thus  limited  in  the  em 
ployment  of  his  time,  was  compelled  to  support  not  only  himself 
and  his  master,  but  the  agent,  the  commission-merchant,  the  ship 
owner,  the  mortgagee,  the  retail  trader,  and  the  government ;  and 
this  under  a  system  that  looked  to  taking  every  thing  from  the 
land  and  returning  nothing  to  it.  Of  the  amount  paid  in  1831 
by  the  British  people  for  the  products  of  the  320,000  black  la 
borers  of  this  island,  the  home  government  took  no  less  than 
£3,736,113  10s.  6d.,f  or  about  $18,000,000,  being  almost  $60 
per  head ;  and  this  for  merely  superintending  the  exchanges. 
Had  no  such  claim  been  made  on  the  product  of  the  labor  of 
these  poor  people,  the  consumer  —  having  his  sugar  cheaper  — 
would  have  absorbed  twice  the  quantity,  and  would  thus  have 
enabled  the  sugar  producers  to  become  larger  customers  to 
himself. 

The  contribution  of  each  negro,  old  and  young,  male  and 
female,  to  the  maintenance  of  the  British  government,  amounted, 
in  that  year,  to  not  less  than  £5,  or  $24 — a  large  sum  to  be 
paid  by  a  people  limited  entirely  to  agriculture,  and  destitute 
of  the  machinery  necessary  for  making  even  that  productive. 
If,  now,  to  this  heavy  burden  we  add  the  commissions,  freights, 

*  BIGELOW  :  Notes  on  Jamaica,  p.  54.  f  Martin's  West  Indies. 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  301 

insurance,  interest,  and  other  charges,  it  will  readily  be  seen  that 
a  system  of  taxation  so  grinding  could  end  no  otherwise  than  as 
it  did  —  in  ruin.  That  such  was  the  tendency  of  things  was  seen 
in  the  steady  diminution  of  production.  In  the  three  years  ending 
with  1802,  the  average  exports  were,  of 

Sugar,  hhds.  Rum,  puncheons.  Coffee,  Ibs. 

113,000  44,000  14,000,000 

Whereas,  those  of  the  three  ending 

with  1829  were  only 92,000  34,000  17,000,000 

The  system  that  looked  to  depriving  the  cultivator  of  the  ad 
vantage  of  a  market  near  at  hand,  in  which  to  sell  his  products  ; 
and  from  which  he  could  carry  home  the  manure — thus  maintain 
ing  the  powers  of  his  land — was  here  producing  its  natural  results, 
in  causing  the  slave  to  become  from  day  to  day  more  barbarized  ; 
and  that  such  was  the  case  was  shown  by  the  enormous  excess  of 
deaths  over  births.     Evidence  of  exhaustion  was,  therefore,  seen 
in  every  thing  connected  with  the  island.     Labor  and  land  were 
declining  in  value,  and  the  security  for  the  payment  of  the  debt 
due  in  England  was  becoming  less  from  year  to  year,  as  more  and 
more  the  people  of  other  countries  were  being  driven  to  the  work 
of  cultivation,  because  of  the  impossibility  of  competing  with  Eng 
land  in  manufactures.     Sugar  having  declined  to  little  more  than 
a  guinea  a  hundredweight,  and  rum  to  little  more  than  two  shil 
lings  a  gallon,*  nearly  the  whole  crop  was  swallowed  up  in  com 
missions  and  interest.     Under  such  circumstances,  waste  of  life 
was  inevitable ;  and  therefore  it  is,  that  we  have  seen  the  impor 
tation  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  who  have  perished — leav 
ing  behind  them  no  traces  of  their  existence.     On  whom,  however, 
must  rest  the  responsibility  for  a  state  of  things  so  hideous  as  that 
which  is  here  exhibited  ?     Not,  surely,  upon  the  planter,  for  he 
exercised  no  volition  whatsoever.     He  was  not  permitted  to  em 
ploy  his  surplus  power  in  refining  his  own  sugar,  nor  could  he 
legally  introduce  a  spindle  or  a  loom  into  the  island.     He  could 
neither  mine  coal  nor  smelt  copper  ore.     Unable  to  repay  his  bor 
rowings  from  the  earth,  the  loans  he  could  obtain  from  her  dimi 
nished  in  quantity ;    and  then,   small  as  they  were,  they  were 
absorbed    by  the    exchangers   and   those   who    superintend   the 
exchanges  —  exercising  the  duties  of  government.     Being  himself 
*  Tooke's  History  of  Prices,  vol.  ii.  p.  412. 


302  CHAPTER   XI.    §  4. 

a  mere  instrument  in  their  hands  for  the  destruction  of  negro 
morals,  intellect,  and  life,  it  is  upon  them,  and  not  upon  him, 
must  rest  the  responsibility  for  the  fact  that,  of  all  the  slaves  im 
ported  into  the  island,  not  more  than  two-fifths  were  represented 
on  the  day  of  emancipation. 

Nevertheless,  he  it  was  that  was  branded  as  the  tyrant  and  the 
destroyer  of  morals  and  of  life  ;  and  public  opinion  —  the  public 
opinion  of  the  same  people  who  had  absorbed  so  large  a  portion 
of  the  product  of  negro  labor — drove  the  government  to  the  mea 
sure  of  releasing  the  slave  from  compulsory  service,  and  appro 
priating  a  certain  amount  to  the  payment,  first,  of  the  mortgage 
debts  due  in  England  —  leaving  the  owner,  in  most  cases,  without 
a  shilling  for  carrying  on  the  work  of  his  plantation.  The  conse 
quences  are  seen  in  the  extensive  abandonment  of  land,  and  in 
the  decline  of  its  value.  Any  quantity  of  it  may  be  purchased, 
prepared  for  cultivation,  and  as  rich  as  any  in  the  island,  for  five 
dollars  an  acre ;  while  other  land,  far  richer,  naturally,  than  any 
in  New  England,  ranges  from  fifty  cents  to  one  dollar.  With 
the  decline  in  the  value  of  land,  the  laborer  tends  towards  bar 
barism,  and  the  reason  of  this  may  be  found  in  the  fact,  that  the 
power  of  association  has  no  existence  —  that  there  is  no  diversity 
of  employment  —  and  that  after  centuries  of  connection  with  a 
community  that  boasts  of  the  perfection  of  its  machinery,  there  is 
not  even  a  tolerable  axe  to  be  found  on  the  island.* 

*  "I  could  not  learn  that  there  were  any  estates  on  the  island  decently 
stocked  with  implements  of  husbandry.  Even  the  modern  axe  is  not  in  gene 
ral  use ;  for  felling  the  larger  class  of  trees,  the  negroes  commonly  use  what 
they  call  an  axe,  which  is  shaped  much  like  a  wedge,  except  that  it  is  a  little 
wider  at  the  edge  than  at  the  opposite  end,  at  the  very  extremity  of  which  a 
perfectly  straight  handle  is  inserted.  A  more  awkward  thing  for  chopping 
could  not  be  well  conceived  —  at  least,  so  I  thought  until  I  saw  the  instru 
ment  in  yet  more  general  use  about  the  houses  in  the  country,  for  cutting 
firewood.  It  was,  in  shape,  size,  and  appearance,  more  like  the  outer  half 
of  the  blade  of  a  scythe,  stuck  into  a  small  wooden  handle,  than  any  thing 
else  I  can  compare  it  to :  with  this  long  knife,  for  it  is  nothing  else,  I  have 
seen  negroes  hacking  at  branches  of  palm  for  several  minutes,  to  accomplish 
what  a  good  wood-chopper,  with  an  American  axe,  would  finish  at  a  single 
stroke.  I  am  not  now  speaking  of  the  poorer  class  of  negro  proprietors, 
whose  poverty  or  ighorance  might  excuse  this,  but  of  the  proprietors  of 
large  estates,  which  have  cost  their  thousands  of  pounds." — Bigelow's  Notes 
on  Jamaica,  p.  129. 

"  They  have  no  new  manufactories  to  resort  to  when  they  are  in  want  of 
work ;  no  unaccustomed  departments  of  mechanical  or  agricultural  labor  are 
open  to  receive  them,  to  stimulate  their  ingenuity  and  reward  their  industry. 
When  they  know  how  to  ply  the  hoe,  pick  the  coffee-berry,  and  tend  the 


OP   CHANGES   OF    MATTER   IN   PLACE.  303 

That  the  artisan  has  always  been  the  ally  of  the  agriculturist  in 
his  contest  with  the  trader  and  the  government,  is  shown  in  every 
page  of  the  world's  history.  The  first  desires  to  tax  him  by  buy 
ing  cheaply  and  selling  dearly.  The  second  taxes  him  for  the 
privilege  of  maintaining  commerce ;  and  the  more  distant  the 
place  of  exchange,  the  greater  is  the  power  of  taxation.  The  arti 
san  coming  nearer  to  him,  the  raw  materials  are  converted  on  the 
spot,  subject  to  no  tax  for  the  maintenance  of  ship-owners,  com 
mission-merchants,  or  shopkeepers  —  and  then  commerce  grows 
with  great  rapidity. 

In  a  piece  of  cloth,  says  Adam  Smith,  weighing  eighty  pounds, 
there  are  not  only  more  than  eighty  pounds  of  wool,  but  also 
' '  several  thousand  weight  of  corn,  the  maintenance  of  the  work 
ing  people  ;"  and  it  is  the  wool  and  the  corn  that  travel  cheaply 
in  the  form  of  cloth.  What,  however,  finally  becomes  of  the  corn  ? 
Although  eaten,  it  is  not  destroyed.  Going  back  upon  the  land, 
and  paying  the  debt  of  him  by  whose  labor  it  had  been  produced, 
the  land  itself  becomes  enriched,  the  larger  become  the  crops,  and 
the  greater  is  the  power  of  the  farmer  to  make  demand  for  the 
services  of  the  artisan.  The  reward  of  human  effort  growing 
with  the  growth  of  value  in  land,  all  become  rich  and  free  toge 
ther  —  and  thus  it  is  that  the  interests  of  all  the  members  of  a 
community  are  so  closely  connected  with  the  adoption  of  a  policy 
looking  to  increase  in  the  amount  of  commerce,  and  in  the  value 
of  land.  The  more  perfect  the  power  of  combination  among  men, 
the  greater  will  be  the  development  of  individual  faculty,  the  less 
will  be  the  power  of  the  trader  —  and  the  greater  will  always  be 
the  freedom  of  man. 

The  colonial  policy  above  described  —  looking  to  the  produc 
tion  of  results  directly  the  reverse  of  this  —  forbade  association, 

sugar-mills,  they  Lave  learned  almost  all  the  industry  of  the  island  can  teach 
them.  If,  in  the  sixteen  years  during  which  the  negroes  have  enjoyed  their 
freedom,  they  have  made  less  progress  in  civilization  than  their  philanthro 
pic  champions  have  promised  or  anticipated,  let  the  want  I  have  suggested 
receive  some  consideration.  It  may  be  that  even  a  white  peasantry  would 
degenerate  under  such  influences.  Reverse  this,  and  when  the  negro  has 
cropped  his  sugar  or  his  coffee,  create  a  demand  for  his  labor  in  the  mills 
and  manufactories  of  which  nature  has  invited  the  establishment  on  this 
island,  and  before  another  sixteen  years  would  elapse  the  world  would  pro 
bably  have  some  new  facts  to  assist  them  in  estimating  the  natural  capabi 
lities  of  the  negro  race,  of  more  efficiency  in  the  hands  of  the  philanthropist 
than  all  the  appeals  which  he  has  ever  been  able  to  address  to  the  hearts  or 
the  consciences  of  men." — Ibid.,  p.  156. 


304  CHAPTER   XI.    §  4. 

because  it  limited  the  whole  people  to  a  single  pursuit.  It  for 
bade  the  immigration  of  artisans,  the  growth  of  towns,  or  the  es 
tablishment  of  schools  ;  and,  consequently,  forbade  the  growth  of 
intellect  among  the  laborers,  or  their  owners.  It  forbade  the 
growth  of  population,  because  it  drove  the  women  and  children 
to  the  culture  of  sugar  among  the  richest  and  most  unhealthy  soils 
of  the  island.  It  thus  impoverished  the  land  and  its  owners, 
exterminated  the  slave,  and  weakened  the  community  —  making  it 
a  mere  instrument  in  the  hands  of  the  people  who  effected  and 
superintended  the  exchanges  —  the  class  of  persons  that,  in  all 
ages,  has  thriven  at  the  cost  of  the  cultivators  of  the  earth.  By 
separating  the  consumer  from  the  producer,  they  were  enabled,  as 
has  been  shown,  to  take  to  themselves  three-fourths  of  the  whole 
product,  leaving  but  one-fourth  to  be  divided  between  the  land 
and  labor  that  had  produced  it.  They,  of  course,  grew  strong, 
while  the  land-holder  and  laborer  grew  weak ;  and  the  weaker 
the  latter  became,  the  less  was  the  need  for  regarding  their  rights 
of  person  or  of  property. 

In  this  state  of  things  it  was,  that  the  master  was  required  to 
accept  a  fixed  sum  of  money  as  compensation  for  relinquishing 
his  claim  to  demand  of  the  slave  the  performance  of  the  work  to 
which  he  had  been  accustomed.  Unfortunately,  however,  the 
system  pursued  had  effectually  prevented  that  improvement  of  feel 
ing  and  taste  required  for  producing  in  the  latter  a  desire  for  any 
thing  beyond  what  was  indispensable  to  the  maintenance  of  exist 
ence.  Towns  and  shops  not  having  grown,  he  had  not  been 
accustomed  even  to  see  the  commodities  by  which  his  fellow- 
laborers  in  the  French  islands  were  tempted  to  exertion.  Schools 
not  having  existed,  even  for  the  whites,  he  had  acquired  no  wish 
for  books  for  himself,  or  for  instruction  for  his  children.  His 
wife  had  acquired  no  taste  for  dress  —  having  always  been  limited 
to  field  labor.  Suddenly  emancipated  from  control,  he  gratified 
the  only  desire  that  had  been  permitted  to  grow  up  in  him  —  the 
love  of  perfect  idleness,  to  be  indulged  to  whatsoever  extent  was 
consistent  with  obtaining  the  little  food  and  clothing  needed  for 
the  support  of  life. 

Widely  different  would  have  been  the  state  of  affairs  had  they 
been  permitted  to  make  their  exchanges  at  home  —  giving  cotton 
and  sugar  for  cloth  and  iron  produced  by  the  labor,  and  from  the 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  305 

soil,  of  the  island.  The  producer  of  sugar  would  then  have  had 
all  the  cloth  given  for  it  by  the  consumer,  instead  of  obtaining  a 
fourth  of  it — and  then  the  land  would  have  increased  in  value,  the 
planter  would  have  grown  rich,  and  the  laborer  would  have  be 
come  free  ;  and  that,  by  virtue  of  a  great  natural  law,  which  pro 
vides  that  the  more  rapid  the  augmentation  of  wealth,  the  greater 
must  be  the  demand  for  labor,  the  greater  must  be  the  quantity 
of  commodities  produced  by  the  laborer,  the  larger  must  be  his 
proportion  of  the  product,  and  the  greater  must  be  the  tendency 
toward  his  becoming  a  free  man,  and  himself  a  capitalist. 

The  more  perfect  the  power  of  association  and  combination,  the 
less  is  the  need  of  man  for  machinery  required  for  effecting  changes 
of  place,  because  his  exchanges  are  chiefly  made  at  home  —  but 
the  greater  is  his  power  to  obtain  that  machinery,  because  combi 
nation  enables  him  to  obtain  command  over  the  great  natural 
forces  given  for  his  use.  The  less  his  power  to  maintain  com 
merce,  the  greater  is  his  dependence  on  machinery  of  transporta 
tion,  and  the  less  his  power  to  obtain  it ;  and  that  such  was  the 
case  in  the  West  Indies  is  shown  by  the  fact,  that  in  the  capital 
of  the  rich  island  of  Jamaica,  Spanishtown,  with  a  population  of 
five  thousand,  there  was  not,  five  years  since,  to  be  found  a  single 
shop,  nor  a  respectable  hotel,  nor  even  a  dray-cart  ;*  and  in  the 
whole  island  there  was  not  a  stage,  nor  any  other  mode  of  regular 
conveyance,  by  land  or  water,  except  on  the  little  railroad,  of  fif 
teen  miles,  from  Kingston  to  the  capital,  f  As  a  necessary  conse 
quence  of  this  state  of  things,  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  labor 
of  the  community  was  required  for  performing  the  work  of  trans- 
portion  within  and  without  the  limits  of  the  island,  that  but  a  very 
small  proportion  of  it  could  be  given  to  any  other  purpose.  J 

§  5.  The  power  to  command  the  services  of  nature  grows  with 
the  growth  of  the  power  of  association . —  and  that  the  latter  may 
increase,  it  is  essential  that  larger  numbers  should  be  enabled  to 

*  Bigelow's  Notes  on  Jamaica,  p.  31.  •}•  Ibid.  p.  69. 

J  Heavy  duties  on  refined  sugar  still  prevent  the  colonies  from  making 
any  step  towards  improvement.  But  recently,  the  governor  of  Deinerara, 
in  a  despatch  to  the  British  government,  stated  that  by  a  very  trifling  addi 
tional  outlay  the  planter  could  ship  his  whole  crop  "of  a  quality  almost 
equal  to  refined  sugar,  though  made,  bona  fide,  by  a  single  process  from  the 
raw  materials;"  but  that  he  dared  not  do,  because  it  would  thereby  be  sub 
jected  to  a  duty  so  high  as  to  be  prohibitive. 


306  CHAPTER    XI.    §  5. 

obtain  supplies  of  food  from  any  given  space.  Modern  political 
economy,  however,  teaches  directly  the  reverse  of  this  —  that,  as 
numbers  increase,  there  arises  a  necessity  for  resorting  to  inferior 
soils,  with  constant  decline  in  the  power  to  command  nature's 
services,  and  constantly  increasing  difficulty  in  obtaining  food ; 
and  that  hence  arises  the  disease  of  over-population.  That  theory, 
as  the  reader  has  seen,  had  its  origin  in  England,  and  was  simply 
an  attempt  to  explain  unnatural  phenomena,  the  work  of  man,  by 
help  of  imaginary  natural  laws,  attributed  to  man's  Creator. 

In  a  state  of  barbarism,  population  is  always  superabundant. 
As  civilization  grows,  larger  numbers  obtain  more  and  better  food 
in  return  to  diminished  labor.  That  such  is  the  fact  is  proved  by 
the  history  of  the  world,  in  its  every  page ;  and  yet,  if  we  are  to 
believe  Messrs.  Malthus,  Ricardo,  and  their  disciples,  the  disease 
that  invariably  accompanies  the  absence  of  the  power  of  combina 
tion,  is  the  one  that  rages  most  when  the  power  of  association 
most  exists. 

In  order  that  the  power  of  man  shall  increase,  there  must  be 
development  of  his  latent  faculties  ;  but  in  order  that  such  deve 
lopment  may  take  place,  it  is  indispensable  that  employments  be 
diversified,  and  men  be  enabled  to  associate.  The  more  rapid 
the  growth  of  the  power  over  nature,  the  less  is  the  necessity  for 
effecting  changes  of  place — the  less  is  the  proportion  of  the  labor 
of  society  required  for  the  work  of  transportation — the  less  is  the 
power  of  the  soldier,  trader,  or  transporter  —  and  the  more  com 
pletely  is  it  proved  that  matter  takes  upon  itself  the  form  of  food 
for  man  in  a  ratio  more  rapid  than  that  in  which  it  tends  to  take 
the  form  of  man  himself. 

The  system  above  described,  and  so  much  reprobated  by  Adam 
Smith,  tended  to  the  production  of  results  entirely  different. 
Looking,  as  it  did,  to  the  prevention  of  association,  it  increased 
the  proportion  of  the  labor  of  society  required  for  the  work  of 
transportation ;  while  by  preventing  the  development  of  the 
latent  faculties  of  man,  it  reduced  the  subject  of  its  operations 
to  the  condition  of  a  mere  brute  beast.  Hence  it  is  that  the 
world  has  been  called  upon  to  witness  the  extermination  of  the 
vast  body  of  people  imported  into  the  British  West  India  islands, 
the  pauperization  of  the  people  of  England,  and  the  invention  of 
a  system  of  political  economy  that  ignores  the  distinctive  qualities 


OF    CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN    PLACE.  307 

of  man  —  retaining  only  those  he  has  in  common  with  the  ox,  the 
wolf,  and  the  horse. 

The  destruction  of  life  and  happiness  in  both  Jamaica  and  Eng 
land  resulted  from  the  power  of  trade  to  control  commerce,  and 
to  tax  it  for  its  purposes.  The  man  of  Jamaica  producing  largely 
of  sugar,  and  the  man  of  England  producing  largely  of  cloth, 
could  they  have  made  their  exchanges  directly,  both  would  have 
been  well  fed  and  clothed ;  but,  in  the  process  of  making  their 
exchanges,  so  large  a  proportion  was  absorbed,  that  the  one 
could  obtain  but  little  cloth,  and  the  other  but  little  sugar. 
Hence  arose  the  idea  of  over-population. 

That  idea  having  had  its  origin  among  British  economists,  and 
being  now  the  received  theory  among  the  British  people,  it  is 
required  for  its  refutation  to  examine  the  history  of  the  various 
communities  subject  to  the  British  system,  with  a  view  to  ascer 
tain  if  it  is  really  a  law  of  nature,  or  if  it  is  only  a  natural  conse 
quence  of  a  policy  that  looked  to  the  separation  of  the  artisan 
from  the  agriculturist,  and  to  the  creation  of  a  single  workshop 
for  the  world.  Portugal,  Turkey,  Ireland,  and  India  having  been 
the  countries  most  subjected  to  it,  all  of  these  will  be  now  ex 
amined,  with  a  view  to  ascertain  how  far  the  phenomena  there 
observed  correspond  with  those  exhibited  in  Jamaica.  . 

*  How  widely  different  were  the  foundations  upon  which  the  French  and 
English  colonial  systems  were  based,  may  be  seen  in  the  facts  —  first,  that 
Colbert  granted  to  the  colonists,  the  most  entire  liberty,  as  regarded  the  con 
version  of  their  rude  products  of  every  kind :  second,  that  —  regarding  their 
dispersion  as  tending  towards  barbarism — he  prohibited  them  from  engaging 
in  the  collection  of  furs  and  skins  :  third,  that  he  limited,  as  far  as  possible, 
the  exportation,  to  the  colonies,  of  fermented  liquors :  and  fourth,  that  he 
interested  himself,  most  warmly,  in  the  prevention  of  that  prostitution  of 
female  slaves,  which  so  much  abounded  in  the  British  islands,  and  so  much 
disgraces  the  United  States. — For  further  information  respecting  the  French 
colonial  system,  see  the  recent  work  of  M.  Joubleau,  jfitudes  sur  Colbert, 
liv.  iii.,  ch.  iii. 


308  CHAPTER    XII.    §  1. 


CHAPTER    XII. 

THE    SAME   SUBJECT   CONTINUED. 

§  1.  THE  splendor  of  PORTUGAL  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
resulting  from  the  exercise  throughout  the  East  of  her  power  of 
appropriation,  had,  as  has  ever  been  the  case,  been  attended  with 
growing  weakness;  and  the  close  of  that  century  found  her,  as  the 
reader  has  seen,  reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  Spanish  province. 
Forty  years  later,  she  succeeded  in  re-establishing  her  independ 
ence,  and  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  she  was  seen  to 
be  engaged  in  a  vigorous  effort  for  securing  its  continuance,  by 
establishing  among  her  people  the  habit  of  association  and  com 
bination  which  was  required  for  the  development  of  their  faculties 
and  the  extension  of  their  commerce.  From  an  early  period  she 
had  been  celebrated  for  her  wool,  but  had  long  been  deficient  in 
the  means  of  converting  it  into  cloth.  Now,  however,  with  a  view 
to  carry  into  effect  the  idea  so  well  expressed  by  Adam  Smith, 
that  to  enable  commerce  to  grow  it  is  essential  to  compress  "not 
only"  the  "eighty  pounds  of  wool  "  but  also  the  "several  thou 
sand  pounds  of  corn,  the  maintenance  of  the  working  people," 
into  "  a  piece  of  cloth,"  she  had  imported  foreign  artisans  by  help 
of  whom  the  woollen  manufacture  had  already  so  rapidly  grown, 
as  fully  to  meet  the  home  demand  for  cloth  ;  and  thus,  while  pro 
moting  commerce,  greatly  lessening  her  dependence  on  the  chances 
and  changes  of  trade  abroad. 

The  administration,  however,  passed  into  other  hands,  and  in 
1703  was  signed  the  famous  Methuen  treaty,  by  which,  in  return 
for  favors  accorded  to  her  wines,  the  idea  of  creating  at  home  a 
market  for  food  and  wool,  and  thus  promoting  commerce,  was  en 
tirely  repudiated.  At  once,  her  markets  were  inundated,  her  manu 
factures  were  ruined  —  and  the  precious  metals  disappeared.* 

*  "  But  after  the  taking  off  of  the  prohibition,  we  brought  away  so  much 
of  their  silver  as  to  leave  them  very  little  for  their  necessary  occasions ;  and 
then  we  began  to  bring  away  their  gold." — British  Merchant,  vol.  iii.  p.  15. 


OF    CHANGES   OF    MATTER   IN   PLACE.  309 

Thus  reconverted  into  a  purely  agricultural  country,  exhaustion 
of  her  soil  followed  as  a  necessary  consequence ;  and  exhaustion 
was  followed  by  decline  in  the  numbers  of  her  people,  so  long 
continued  that  the  population  is  now  only  three  millions  —  the 
decrease,  in  the  last  century  alone,  having  been  nearly  seven 
hundred  thousand.  With  declining  numbers  and  diminished 
power  of  combination,  there  has  been  an  increase  in  the  difficulty 
of  effecting  changes  in  the  place  of  things  or  people ;  and  in 
the  country  that  even  in  the  days  of  the  Caesars  was  supplied 
with  roads,  the  mails  are  now  carried  on  horseback,  and  at  the 
rate  of  three  miles  an  hour,  between  the  capital  and  the  provin 
cial  cities.  There  being  no  public  conveyance  of  any  kind 
throughout  the  country,  except  on  the  road  between  Lisbon  and 
Oporto,  travellers  are  compelled  to  hire  mules  to  enable  them 
selves  to  pass  from  place  to  place.  "Not  only,"  says  a  recent 
traveller,  "are  there  no  roads  worthy  of  the  name,"  but  "the 
very  streets  and  thoroughfares  are  converted  into  nurseries  for 
manure;"  and  "the  only  mode  of  conveying  heavy  goods  from 
one  port  to  another  is  in  bullock-carts,  and  for  light  goods  on 
mules,  or  on  the  backs  of  gallegos" — the  value  of  man  being  there 
so  small  that  he  is  regarded  as  a  mere  beast  of  burden. 

Isolation  follows  necessarily  in  the  train  of  depopulation,  and 
the  human  faculties  diminish  in  their  development — machinery  then 
declining  in  quality,  and  nature  acquiring  power  at  the  cost  of 
man.  "  It  is  surprising,"  says  another  traveller,  "how  ignorant, 
or  at  least  superficially  acquainted,  the  Portuguese  are  with  every 
kind  of  handicraft :  a  carpenter  is  awkward  and  clumsy,  spoiling 
every  work  he  attempts ;  and  the  way  in  which  the  doors  and 
woodwork  even  of  good  houses  are  finished  would  have  suited  the 
rudest  ages.  Their  carriages  of  all  kinds,  from  the  hidalgo's 
family  coach  to  the  peasant's  market  cart,  their  agricultural  im 
plements,  locks  and  keys,  &c.,  are  ludicrously  bad.  They  seem 
to  disdain  improvement,  and  are  so  infinitely  below  par,  so  strik 
ingly  inferior  to  the  rest  of  Europe,  as  to  form  a  sort  of  disgrace 
ful  wonder  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century." 

The  utility  of  the  earth,  and  of  its  products,  consequently  dimi 
nishes,  with  constant  increase  in  the  value  of  commodities  required 
for  the  use  of  man,  and  decline  in  the  value  of  man  himself — 
being  directly  the  reverse  of  what  is  observed  in  all  those  coun- 


310  CHAPTER   XII.    §  1. 

tries  in  which  he  is  permitted  the  indulgence  of  that  prime  want 
of  his  nature  which  leads  him  to  seek  association  and  combina 
tion  with  his  fellow-men. 

The  system  has  endured  for  a  century  and  a  half,  during  all 
which  time  the  power  to  command  the  services  of  nature  has 
declined,  as  is  manifest  from  the  constantly  growing  difficulty  of 
obtaining  the  food,  the  clothing,  and  the  shelter  required  for 
man's  support.  The  proportion  of  the  products  of  labor  required 
for  paying  the  expenses  of  transportation  has  steadily  increased, 
as  the  quantity  of  things  produced  has  decreased ;  and  the  result 
is  now  seen  in  the  fact  that  with  the  decline  of  commerce  at  home, 
the  power  to  maintain  it  abroad  has  so  far  diminished  that  Por 
tugal  has  ceased  to  enter  into  the  consideration  even  of  those  by 
whom,  in  1703,  her  trade  was  so  greatly  coveted.  Individuality 
of  the  community  has  disappeared  with  the  disappearance  of  indi 
viduality  in  the  people  of  whom  it  is  composed ;  and,  as  we  are 
told  in  a  recent  work  of  high  reputation,  "  the  finances  are  in  the 
most  deplorable  condition,  the  treasury  is  dry,  and  all  branches 
of  the  public  service  suffer.  A  carelessness  and  a  mutual  apathy 
reign  not  only  throughout  the  government,  but  also  throughout 
the  nation.  While  improvement  is  sought  everywhere  else 
throughout  Europe,  Portugal  remains  stationary.  The  postal 
service  of  the  country  offers  a  curious  example  of  this,  nineteen  to 
twenty-one  days  being  still  required  for  a  letter  to  go  and  come 
between  Lisbon  and  Braganza,  a  distance  of  423^  kilometres,  (or 
little  over  300  miles.)  All  the  resources  of  the  state  are  exhausted, 
and  it  is  probable  that  the  receipts  will  not  give  one-third  of  the 
amount  for  which  they  figure  in  the  budget."* 

Such  was  the  state  of  affairs  a  few  years  since,  but  the  exhaustive 
effects  of  an  exclusive  agriculture  are  becoming  from  year  to  year 
more  manifest.  The  domestic  market  for  corn  was  exchanged  for 
a  foreign  one  for  the  grape,  but  now  that  itself  has  failed  because 
of  the  unceasing  withdrawal  from  the  soil  of  all  the  elements  of 
which  grapes  are  composed.  Whole  classes  in  Portugal  are  now 
reduced  to  utter  poverty,  while  in  Madeira  men  perish  by  thou 
sands  for  want  of  food  —  as  happens  everywhere  in  the  absence 
of  that  diversification  of  employments  which  gives  rise  to  com 
merce,  and  developes  the  latent  faculties  of  man.  The  nation 
*  Annuaire  de  1'Economie  Politique,  1849,  p.  322. 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  311 

that  commences  with  the  export  of  the  raw  products  of  the  soil, 
must  end  with  the  export,  or  extermination,  of  men. 

When  population  increases  and  men  come  together,  even  the 
poor  land  is  made  rich;  and  thus  it  is,  that  "the  power  of  manure 
causes  the  poor  lands  of  the  department  of  the  Seine  to  yield 
thrice  as  much  as  those  of  the  Loire."*  When  population  dimi 
nishes,  and  men  are  thereby  forced  to  live  at  greater  distances  from 
each  other,  even  the  rich  lands  become  impoverished  ;  and  of  this 
no  better  evidence  need  be  sought  than  that  here  furnished.  In 
the  one  case,  each  day  brings  men  nearer  to  that  perfect  freedom 
of  thought,  speech,  and  action  essential  to  the  growth  of  com 
merce.  In  the  other,  they  become  from  day  to  day  more  barbar 
ized  and  enslaved,  and  the  women  are  more  and  more  driven  to 
the  field,  there  to  become  the  slaves  of  fathers,  husbands,  bro 
thers,  and  sons,  while  the  community  becomes,  from  day  to  day, 
more  and  more  the  prey  of  those  classes  which  "live,  and  move, 
and  have  their  being/'  by  virtue  of  the  exercise  of  their  powers  of 
appropriation  —  the  soldier  and  the  trader.  The  strength  of  na 
tions  is  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  the  proportions  borne  by  them  to 
the  mass  of  which  the  community  is  composed.  Those  propor 
tions  grow  with  the  decline  of  commerce.  Commerce  grows  with 
every  diminution  in  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place, 
and  for  depending  on  the  services  of  men  who  live  by  carrying 
arms,  sailing  ships,  or  driving  wagons.  It  declines  with  every 
increase  therein.  Were  evidence  of  this  desired,  it  would  be 
found  on  comparing  the  past  and  present  of  the  naturally  rich 
country  of  Portugal,  so  long  subjected  to  the  policy  of  the  coun 
try  in  which  originated  the  theory  of  over-population. 

§  2.  Of  all  the  countries  of  Europe,  there  is  none  possessed  of 
natural  advantages  to  enable  it  to  compare  with  those  constitut 
ing  the  TURKISH  EMPIRE  in  Europe  and  Asia.  Wool  and  silk, 
corn,  oil,  and  tobacco,  might,  with  proper  cultivation,  be  pro 
duced  in  almost  unlimited  quantity ;  while  Thessaly  and  Macedo 
nia,  long  celebrated  for  the  production  of  cotton,  abound  in  lands 
uncultivated,  capable  of  yielding  it  in  sufficient  extent  to  clothe  all 
Europe.  Coal  and  iron  ore  abound,  and  in  quality  equal  to  any 
in  the  world  ;  while  in  parts  of  the  empire  "the  hills  seem  a  mass 
*  De  Jonnes's  Statistique  de  la  France,  p.  129. 


312  CHAPTER   XII.    §2. 

of  2arbonate  of  copper."  Nature  lias  done  every  thing  for  that 
country ;  and  yet,  of  all  the  people  of  Europe,  the  Turkish  rayah 
approaches  in  condition  nearest  to  a  slave  ;  and  of  all  the  govern 
ments  of  Europe,  that  of  Turkey  is  most  compelled  to  submit  to 
the  dictation,  not  only  of  foreign  nations,  but  also  of  foreign  and 
domestic  traders  in  money  and  other  merchandise.  Why  it  is  so, 
we  may  now  inquire. 

Two  centuries  since,  the  trade  with  Turkey  constituted  the 
most  important  portion  of  that  maintained  by  Western  Europe ; 
and  Turkish  merchants  ranked  among  the  wealthiest  of  those  who 
frequented  the  markets  of  the  West.  A  little  later,  its  govern 
ment  united  with  those  of  France  and  England  in  a  treaty  by 
which  it  bound  itself  to  charge  no  higher  duty  upon  their  imports 
than  three  per  cent. ;  and  as  their  vessels  were,  by  the  same  treaty, 
exempted  from  all  port-charges,  the  system  thus  established  was, 
practically,  one  of  the  most  absolute  and  entire  freedom  of  trade. 

For  more  than  a  century  following,  Turkey  was  still  enabled  to 
some  extent  to  compete  in  manufactures  with  the  nations  of  the 
West,  and  to  preserve  among  her  people  the  power  and  habit  of 
association.  "  Ambelakaia,"  says  M.  de  Bcaujour,  "supplied  in 
dustrious  Germany,  not  by  the  perfection  of  its  jennies,  but  by  the 
industry  of  its  spindle  and  distaff.  It  taught  Montpellier  the  art 
of  dyeing,  not  from  experimental  chairs,  but  because  dyeing  was 
with  it  a  domestic  and  culinary  operation,  subject  to  daily  obser 
vation  in  every  kitchen ;  and  by  the  simplicity  and  honesty,  not 
the  science,  of  its  system,  it  reads  a  lesson  to  commercial  associa 
tions,  and  holds  up  an  example  —  unparalleled  in  the  commercial 
history  of  Europe  —  of  a  joint-stock  and  labor  company  ably  and 
economically  and  successfully  administered,  in  which  the  interests 
of  industry  and  capital  were  long  equally  represented.  Yet  the 
system  of  administration  with  which  all  this  is  connected  is  com 
mon  to  the  thousand  hamlets  of  Thessaly  that  have  not  emerged 
from  their  insignificance ;  but  Ambelakaia  for  twenty  years  was 
left  alone."* 

Revenue  from  the  customs  being  at  an  end,  whatever  deficiency 
might  by  the  treaty  have  been  created,  required,  of  course,  to  be 
supplied  by  means  of  direct  taxation ;  and,  accordingly,  the  govern- 

*  Tableau  du  Commerce  de  la  Grece,  quoted  by  TJrquhart,  Resources  of 
Turkey,  p.  47. 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER  IN   PLACE.  313 

ment  lias  from  that  time  to  the  present  been  wholly  dependent  upon 
poll  taxes,  house  taxes,  and  land  taxes  —  the  latter  collected  first 
in  the  form  of  an  assessment  upon  the  land  itself,  and  again  in 
that  of  export  duties.*  Trade  was  freed  from  all  let,  or  hind 
rance;  but  commerce  at  home  was  shackled  by  means  of  constant 
interferences. 

Despite  those  interferences,  the  system  of  local  centres,  neutral 
izing  the  attractions  of  the  great  political  and  trading  capitals, 
continued  in  existence,  as  we  have  seen,  until  the  close  of  the  last 
century ;  and,  as  a  consequence,  the  country  remained,  as  yet, 
both  rich  and  strong.  Even  then,  however,  Great  Britain  had 
invented  machinery  for  spinning  cotton,  and  had  —  by  prohibiting 
its  export,  as  well  as  that  of  all  the  artisans  by  whose  help  it 
might  elsewhere  have  been  made — provided  that  all  the  cotton  of 
the  world  should  be  brought  to  her  looms,  to  be  there  converted 
into  cloth.  Turkey,  having  cotton  to  sell,  had  been  accustomed 
to  sell  it  in  the  form  of  cloth ;  and  the  power  so  to  do  had  en 
abled  her  to  maintain  commerce  at  home  and  abroad.  Now, 
however,  that  commerce  was  to  cease — giving  place  to  trade  ;  and 
cease  it  did  —  Ambelakaia,  and  various  other  seats  of  manufac 
tures,  having  been  entirely  abandoned  within  twenty  years  from 
the  date  of  the  description  given  above.  Of  600  looms  at  Scu 
tari  in  1812,  but  40  remained  in  1821 ;  and  of  the  2000  weaving 
establishments  at  Tournovo  in  1812,  but  200  remained  in  1830. 
Since  then,  the  manufacture  has,  it  is  believed,  entirely  disap 
peared. 

For  a  time,  cotton  went  abroad,  to  be  returned  in  the  form  of 
yarn,  thus  making  a  voyage  of  thousands  of  miles  in  search  of  the 
little  spindle ;  but  this  trade,  even,  has  passed  away,  and  as  a 
consequence,  there  has  been  a  great  decline  in  wages,  affecting 
every  description  of  labor.  "The  profits,  twenty  years  since," 
says  Mr.  Urquhart,  writing  in  1832,  "had  been  reduced  to  one- 
half,  and  sometimes  to  one-third,  by  the  introduction  of  English 
cottons,  which,  though  they  have  reduced  the  home  price,  and  ar- 

*  The  reader  who  reflects  that  the  price  of  the  commodities  exported  is 
fixed  in  the  general  market  of  the  world,  and  is  not  in  any  manner  affected 
by  the  distribution  of  the  proceeds  between  the  people  and  the  government, 
will  readily  see  that  such  duties  are  in  effect  a  land  tax,  with  the  additional 
disadvantage  of  involving  constant  interference  with  commerce.  So  far  as 
foreigners  were  concerned,  the  system  was,  and  is,  one  of  perfect  free  trade 
and  direct  taxation. 

YOL.  I.— 21 


314  CHAPTER   XII.    §  2. 

rested  the  export  of  cotton-yarn  from  Turkey,"  had  then  "not  yet 
supplanted  the  home  manufacture  in  any  visible  degree" — the  peo 
ple  having  been  compelled  to  go  on  "  working  merely  for  bread, 
and  reducing  their  price,  in  a  struggle  of  hopeless  competition. 
The  industry,  however,  of  the  women  and  children,"  as  he  conti 
nues,  "  is  most  remarkable  ;  in  every  interval  of  labor,  tending  the 
cattle,  and  carrying  water — the  spindle  and  distaff,  as  in  the  days  of 
Xerxes,  being  never  out  of  their  hands.  The  children  are  assidu 
ously  at  work,  from  the  moment  their  little  fingers  can  turn  the 
spindle.  About  Ambelakaia,  the  former  focus  of  the  cotton-yarn 
trade,  the  peasantry  has  suffered  dreadfully  from  this,  though  for 
merly  the  women  could  earn  as  much  in-doors  as  their  husbands  in 
the  field,  at  present,  their  daily  profit  does  not  exceed  twenty  paras, 
if  realized,  for  often  they  cannot  dispose  of  the  yarn  when  spun.*" 

Women's  wages  were  then  but  four  cents  a  day  —  the  "unre 
mitting  labor  of  a  week"  being  required  for  earning  a  quarter 
dollar.  Men,  employed  in  gathering  mulberry-leaves  and  attend 
ing  silk-worms,  could  earn,  when  employed,  five  cents  a  day ;  but 
at  Salonica,  the  shipping  port  of  Thessaly,  wages  were  as  high  as 
fifty  cents  a  week.  Commerce  had  ceased,  and  with  the  decline 
in  the  power  of  association,  the  value  of  man  and  the  utility  of 
the  earth  had  almost  disappeared ;  while  the  value  of  commodi 
ties  had  become  so  great  as  to  cause  men,  women,  and  children 
to  perish  for  want  of  food. 

While  manufactures  existed,  and  while  commerce  could  be 
maintained,  agriculture  flourished;  and  it  did  so  because  —  the 
market  for  its  products  being  near  at  hand  —  it  was  subject  to 
little  taxation  consequent  upon  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes 
of  place.  Roads  and  bridges  could  then  be  kept  in  order ;  but,  as 
manufactures  declined,  and  as  it  became  more  and  more  necessary 
to  carry  the  bulky  products  of  the  earth  to  the  distant  market,  the 
need  of  roads  increased,  but  the  power  to  maintain  them  declined 
— always  a  result  of  the  sacrifice  of  commerce  at  the  shrine  of  trade. 
"The  increased  expense  of  transport,"  says  a  recent  traveller, 
"  enabled  a  few  capitalists  to  monopolize  the  whole  trade  in  all 
articles  of  export" — as  a  consequence  of  which  "the  ruin  of  the 
landed  proprietors  and  agriculturists  soon  commenced,"  and 
"families  were  impoverished  and  villages  disappeared;"  while 
*  Resources  of  Turkey,  p.  146. 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  315 

11  in  many  extensive  districts  the  whole  rural  population  aban 
doned  the  cultivation  of  their  native  soil  to  emigrate  to  the  near 
est  commercial  cities."*  Thus  it  is  that  as  the  dependence  on  the 
distant  market  increases,  the  power  to  go  to  it  declines  ;  while  as 
the  dependence  on  it  declines,  the  power  to  resort  to  it  as  stead 
ily  increases.  In  the  one  case,  nature  is  constantly  obtaining 
greater  power  over  man ;  whereas,  in  the  other,  man  is  as  con 
stantly  obtaining  power  over  nature.  In  the  one  case,  utility 
diminishes,  and  the  value  of  commodities  increases ;  whereas,  in 
the  other,  utilities  increase,  and  value  declines.  In  the  one,  man 
becomes  from  day  to  day  more  enslaved ;  whereas,  in  the  other, 
he  becomes  more  free. 

"No  improvement,"  as  we  learn  from  the  same  authority,  "can 
now  be  attempted,  except  in  the  vicinity  of  large  towns,  which 
affor.l  a  constant  and  immediate  market  for  all  kinds  of  agricultu 
ral  produce ;"  or,  in  other  words,  those  parts  of  the  country  in 
which  commerce  is  still  maintained.  Nothing  of  the  kind  is  to 
be  hoped  for  in  those  districts  from  which  "even  the  heaviest 
articles  must  be  transported  by  pack-horses,"  with  an  expense  for 
carriage  "that  has  of  late  years  been  constantly  increasing"  — 
causing  "the  cultivation  and  export  of  several  articles,  peculiarly 
adapted  to  the  soil  and  climate,  to  have  diminished ;"  and  yet 
those  are  the  portions  of  the  country  that  most  require  it.  The 
proportion  of  the  labor  of  the  country  given  to  the  work  of 
transportation  is  a  constantly  increasing  one,  and,  as  a  necessary 
consequence,  that  given  to  production  is  a  decreasing  one,  with 
constant  decline  in  the  power  of  the  community,  and  of  the  indi 
viduals  of  whom  it  is  composed. 

Depopulation  and  poverty  having,  in  every  country  of  the 
world,  been  consequent  upon  increase  in  the  power  of  the  trader, 
and  diminution  of  power  to  maintain  commerce,  it  is  no  matter 
of  surprise  that  all  recent  travellers  should  have  exhibited  the 
nation  as  passing  steadily  onward  toward  ruin,  and  the  people 
toward  a  state  of  slavery  the  most  complete  —  the  inevitable 
result  of  a  policy  that  excludes  the  mechanic  and  prevents  the 
development  of  individuality  among  the  people.  Among  the 
latest,  is  Mr.  Mac  Farlane,f  at  the  date  of  whose  visit,  not  only 

*  Blackwood's  Magazine,  December,  1854. 

f  Turkey  and  its  Destiny.     By  C.  MAC  FARLANE.     London,  1850. 


316  CHAPTER   XII.    §  2. 

had  the  silk  manufacture  entirely  disappeared,  but  even  the  fila 
tures  for  preparing  the  raw  silk  were  closed  —  weavers  having 
become  ploughmen,  and  women  and  children  having  been  de 
prived  of  all  employment.  The  silk  cultivators  had  become 
entirely  dependent  on  a  foreign  market  in  which  there  existed 
no  demand  for  the  products  of  their  land  and  labor.  Great  Bri 
tain  being  then  in  the  midst  of  one  of  her  periodical  crises,  had 
deemed  it  necessary  to  reduce  the  prices  of  all  agricultural  pro 
ducts,  with  a  view  to  stop  their  importation.  On  one  occasion 
during  Mr.  Mac  Farlane's  travels,  there  came  a  report  that  silk 
had  risen  in  England,  producing  a  momentary  stir  and  animation, 
that,  as  he  says,  ' '  flattered  his  national  vanity  to  think  that  an 
electric  touch  parting  from  London,  the  mighty  heart  of  commerce, 
should  thus  be  felt  in  a  few  days  at  a  place  like  Biljek."  Such  is 
trading  centralization  !  It  renders  the  agriculturists  of  the  world 
mere  slaves,  dependent  for  food  and  clothing  upon  the  will  of  a 
few  people,  proprietors  of  a  small  amount  of  machinery,  at  "  the 
mighty  heart  of  commerce."  At  one  moment,  speculation  being 
rife,  commodities  rise  in  price  ;  and  every  effort  is  made  to  induce 
large  shipments  of  raw  produce.  At  the  next,  money  is  said  to 
be  scarce,  and  the  shippers  are  ruined. 

The  ruins  of  once  prosperous  villages  may  everywhere  be  seen 
and  the  results  of  this  diminution  in  the  force  of  local  attraction 
exhibit  themselves  in  the  universal  decline  of  agriculture.  The 
plough,  the  wine-press,  and  the  oil-mill,  now  in  use,  are  all 
equally  barbarous  in  their  construction.  The  once  productive 
cotton-fields  of  Thessaly  lie  untilled,  and  even  around  Constan 
tinople  itself  "there  are  no  cultivated  lands  to  speak  of  within 
twenty  miles  —  in  some  directions  within  fifty  miles.  The  com 
monest  necessaries  of  life  come  from  distant  parts  :  the  corn  for 
daily  bread  from  Odessa ;  the  cattle  and  sheep  from  beyond 
Adrianople,  or  from  Asia  Minor ;  the  rice,  of  which  such  a  vast 
consumption  is  made,  from  the  neighborhood  of  Philipopolis ; 
the  poultry  chiefly  from  Bulgaria  ;  the  fruit  and  vegetables  from 
Nicomedia  and  Moiidania.  Thus  a  constant  drain  of  money  is 
occasioned,  without  any  visible  return,  except  to  the  treasury  or 
from  the  property  of  the  Ulema."* 

The  silk  that  is  made  —  being  badly  prepared,  because  of  the 
*  Slade's  Travels  in  Turk  37,  vol.  ii.  p.  143. 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  317 

difficulty  of  obtaining  good  machinery — is  now  required  to  go  to 
England  in  its  rudest  state,  to  be  there  prepared  and  sent  to  Per 
sia  . —  and  thus  does  commerce  with  foreign  nations  decline  with 
the  diminution  of  the  power  to  maintain  commerce  at  home. 

Not  only  is  the  foreigner  free  to  introduce  his  wares,  but  he 
may,  on  payment  of  a  trifling  duty  of  two  per  cent.,  carry  them 
throughout  the  empire  until  finally  disposed  of.  Travelling  by 
caravan,  he  is  lodged  without  expense.  He  brings  his  goods  to 
be  exchanged  for  money,  or  what  else  he  needs ;  and,  the  ex 
change  effected,  he  disappears  as  suddenly  as  he  came.  As  a 
necessary  result  of  this  entire  freedom  of  trade,  local  commerce 
has  no  existence  —  the  storekeeper,  who  paid  rent  and  taxes,  hav 
ing  found  himself  unable  to  contend  with  the  travelling  pedlar, 
who  paid  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.*  The  poor  cultivator, 
therefore,  finds  it  impossible  to  exchange  his  products,  small  as 
they  are,  for  the  commodities  he  needs,  except  on  the  occasional 
arrival  of  a  caravan,  which  has  generally  proved  far  more  likely  to 
absorb  the  little  money  in  circulation,  than  any  of  the  more  bulky 
and  less  valuable  products  of  the  earth. 

As  usual  in  purely  agricultural  countries,  the  whole  body  of 
cultivators  is  hopelessly  in  debt,  and  the  money-lender  fleeces  all. 
If  he  aids  the  peasant  before  harvest,  he  must  have  an  enormous 
interest,  and  be  paid  in  produce  at  a  large  discount  from  the  mar 
ket  price.  Weakness  and  poverty  among  the  agricultural  classes 
is  found  in  all  communities  in  which  agriculture  has  not  been  per 
mitted  to  strengthen  itself  by  means  of  that  natural  alliance  between 

*  "It  is  impossible  to  witness  the  arrival  of  the  many-tongued  caravan 
at  its  resting-place  for  the  night,  and  see,  unladen  and  piled  up  together, 
the  bales  from  such  distant  places  —  to  glance  over  their  very  wrappers, 
and  the  strange  marks  and  characters  which  they  bear  —  without  being 
amazed  at  so  eloquent  a  contradiction  of  our  preconceived  notions  of  indis 
criminate  despotism  and  universal  insecurity  of  the  East.  But  while  we 
observe  the  avidity  with  which  our  goods  are  sought,  the  preference  now 
transferred  from  Indian  to  Birmingham  muslins,  from  Golconda  to  Glasgow 
chintzes,  from  Damascus  to  Sheffield  steel,  from  Cashmere  shawls  to  English 
broadcloth ;  and  while,  at  the  same  time,  the  energies  of  their  commercial 
spirit  are  brought  thus  substantially  before  us ;  it  is  indeed  impossible  not 
to  regret  that  a  gulf  of  separation  should  have  so  long  divided  the  East  and 
the  West,  and  equally  impossible  not  to  indulge  in  the  hope  and  anticipation 
of  a  vastly  extended  traffic  with  the  East,  and  of  all  the  blessings  which  follow 
fast  and  welling  in  the  wake  of  commerce."  —  URQUHART  :  Resources  of  Tur 
key,  p.  143. 

Nevertheless,  every  part  of  Mr.  Urquhart's  work  is  a  record  of  the  decline 
of  commerce,  consequent  upon  the  growing  ascendency  of  trade  and  traders. 


318  CHAPTER    XII.    §2. 

the  plough  and  the  loom,  the  hammer  and  the  harrow,  so  much 
admired  by  Adam  Smith;  'and  it  is  to  the  resemblance  to  each 
other  in  this  respect  of  Portugal,  Jamaica,  and  Turkey,  that  we 
may  find  the  causes  of  their  resemblance  in  the  fact  that  the  value 
of  man  is  steadily  declining,  and  that  he  is,  himself,  becoming  from 
day  to  day  more  and  more  a  slave  to  nature  and  to  his  fellow-man. 
The  government,  as  weak  as  the  people,  is  so  entirely  dependent  on 
the  will  of  domestic  and  foreign  traders,  that  they  may  be  regarded 
as  the  real  owners  of  the  land,  with  power  to  tax  its  occupants  at 
discretion;  and -to  them,  certainly,  enure  all  the  profits  of  cul 
tivation. 

As  a  consequence  of  this,  real  estate  is  almost  wholly  valueless. 
In  the  great  valley  of  Buyukdere,  once  known  as  the  fair  land, 
and  close  in  the  vicinity  of  Constantinople,  a  property  twelve 
miles  in  circumference  had,  but  a  short  time  previously  to  Mr. 
Mac  Farlane's  visit,  been  sold  for  less  than  five  thousand  dollars  ; 
while,  elsewhere,  another  almost  as  large  had  been  disposed  of  for 
a  much  less  sum.  Small,  even,  as  are  these  prices,  they  cannot 
fail  to  become  yet  smaller,  under  a  system  that  compels  the  poor 
cultivator  to  exhaust  the  soil  in  the  effort  to  supply  a  distant  mar 
ket.  In  the  neighborhood  of  Smyrna,  land  may  readily  be  pur 
chased  at  six  cents  an  acre  ;  but  those  who  are  content  to  go  to  a 
little  distance  from  the  city  may  have  it  altogether  free  of  charge. 
Domestic  commerce  having  scarcely  an  existence,  it  follows  here, 
as  everywhere,  that  the  foreign  one  is  entirely  insignificant. 
But  recently,  the  whole  amount  of  exports  was  but  thirty-three 
millions  of  dollars,  or  about  two  dollars  a  head ;  while  the  total 
exports  from  Great  Britain  to  Turkey  were  but  £2,221,000,  or 
$11,000,000  —  being  but  little  more  than  fifty  cents  per  head; 
arid  yet,  much  of  even  this  small  quantity  went  there  only  en  route 
for  foreign  markets. 

Throughout  the  world,  commerce  has  grown,  land  has  become 
divided  and  has  increased  in  value,  men  have  become  free,  and 
communities  have  become  strong,  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  power 
of  combination  for  obtaining  command  over  the  forces  of  nature. 
That  power  has  everywhere  grown  with  the  growth  of  demand 
for  the  various  faculties  of  men  —  resulting  from  variety  in  the 
modes  of  employment,  and  leading  to  the  development  of  indi 
viduality  among  the  people  of  whom  the  community  has  been 


OF    CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  319 

composed.  With  the  progress  of  that  development,  thtre  has 
been  witnessed  an  increased  economy  of  human  force,  both  men 
tal  and  physical ;  and  the  force  thus  economized  at  one  instant 
has  constituted  the  capital  to  be  used  in  the  one  that  next 
succeeded.  The  greater  that  economy,  the  greater  has  been  the 
power  to  obtain  new  machinery  by  help  of  which  to  obtain  fur 
ther  dominion  over  nature  —  compelling  water,  wind,  steam,  and 
electricity  to  do  the  work  that  before  had  required  the  human 
arm.  As  progress  has  diminished,  and  as  differences  among  men 
have  become  less  numerous,  individuality  has  declined,  with  con 
stant  increase  in  the  waste  of  human  force  —  each  step  in  that 
direction  being  but  the  preparation  for  a  new  and  greater  one. 
As  mills  have  stopped,  and  manufactures  have  declined,  the  peo 
ple  who  had  wrought  in  them  have  been  forced  to  seek  abroad  the 
means  of  subsistence  denied  to  them  at  home.  As  population  has 
diminished,  the  power  to  maintain  roads  and  bridges  has  declined ; 
and,  as  the  bridges  have  disappeared,  the  rich  lands  have  been 
abandoned. —  Malaria  next  decimating  the  scattered  population 
that  yet  remains,  we  find,  with  every  stage  of  the  progress,  a  diminu 
tion  of  the  quantity  of  things  produced,  accompanied  by  an  increase 
in  the  obstacles  lying  between  the  producer  and  his  market — requir 
ing,  for  their  removal,  a  constantly  increasing  proportion,  and  en 
abling  the  wagoner  and  the  trader  to  grow  rich  at  the  expense  of 
the  poor  men  who  yet  desire  to  till  the  earth.  Trade  thus  tends  as 
certainly  towards  slavery  as  does  commerce  towards  freedom. 

In  the  real  and  permanent  interests  of  nations  there  are  no  dis 
cords.  Whatever  tends  to  the  injury  of  one  tends  equally  to  that 
of  others,  and  the  day  may,  perhaps,  arrive,  when  such  will  be 
admitted  to  be  the  case  ;  and  when,  too,  it  will  be  admitted  that, 
among  nations  as  among  individuals,  an  enlightened  self-interest 
dictates  a  constant  observance  of  the  golden  rule  lying  at  the 
foundation  of  Christianity — Do  unto  others  as  ye  would  that  they 
should  do  unto  you  !  But  a  century  since,  Turkey,  Portugal,  and 
the  West  India  islands,  were  the  most  profitable  of  all  of  Eng 
land's  customers — those  whose  trade  was  most  anxiously  sought ; 
yet  where  are  they  now — and  what  are  they  ?  The  cause  of  wars, 
difficulties,  and  expenditures,  of  all  kinds ;  poor  in  themselves, 
and  neglected  and  despised  by  all  others  ;  and  most  especially  so 
by  England  herself.  Compelled  to  the  pursuance  of  a  policy  that 


320  CHAPTER   XII.    §3. 

destroyed  commerce  among  themselves,  they  have  been  becoming, 
from  year  to  year,  more  and  more  mere  instruments  to  be  used  by 
trade;  until  at  length  they  have  ceased  at  all  to  command  respect 
among  the  communities  of  the  earth.  Such  is  the  real  cause  of  the 
decline  and  fall  of  the  Turkish  empire,  whose  strength  would  now 
be  greater  than  it  ever  before  had  been  had  its  policy  looked  to 
the  development  of  the  latent  powers  of  its  people  and  its  land  — 
and  to  the  promotion  of  commerce. 

As  Portugal,  Turkey,  and  Jamaica  have  become  more  entirely 
dependent  on  trade,  there  has  been  a  decline  in  their  power  to 
consume  the  products  of  British  labor  and  skill ;  and  thus  it  has 
been  that,  in  our  own  day,  the  fable  of  JEsop,  of  the  goose  and 
the  golden  egg,  has  been  re-enacted.  Hence  it  is  that,  while,  on 
the  one  hand,  we  have  had  occasion  to  witness  a  decline  in  all  the 
foreign  countries  in  which  commerce  was  being  sacrificed  to  trade  ; 
we  have  seen,  on  the  other,  a  wonderful  growth  of  pauperism  in 
England — giving  rise  to  the  doctrine  of  over-population,  and  lead 
ing  to  the  belief  that  the  necessities  of  trade  require  labor  to  be 
cheap  that  capital  may  be  enabled  to  command  its  services  ;  or,  in 
other  words,  that  to  enable  trade  to  thrive,  man  must  be  enslaved. 
Such  is  the  moral  of  that  modern  political  economy  which  ignores 
the  existence  of  all  the  distinctive  qualities  of  man,  and  confines 
itself  to  those  material  ones  common  to  him,  the  ox,  the  horse, 
and  all  other  animals.  .Real  science  —  leading  us  in  a  direction 
totally  opposed  to  this  —  enables  us  to  find  in  every  page  of  his 
tory  confirmation  of  the  truth  of  the  proposition,  that  in  the  moral 
as  in  the  physical  world,  centralization,  slavery,  and  death  travel 
always  hand  in  hand  with  each  other  —  and  that  this  is  equally 
true  whether  considered  in  relation  to  nations  exercising  power, 
or  those  over  whom  it  is  so  exercised. 

§  3.  At  the  date  of  the  Revolution  of  1688,  the  woollen  manu 
facture  was  rapidly  advancing  in  IRELAND,*  but  the  government 
of  William  and  Mary,  in  reply  to  the  application  of  the  London 

*  "Here  is  the  Moneys  gone,  (and  taken  out  of  Trade  in  England,)  and 
carried  into  Ireland ;  and  our  People  too,  with  this  Money,  make  Cloth,  and 
serve  it  cheap  in  all  places  where  we  send  our  Cloth  ;  and  carry  to  Holland 
cheap  Wool,  and  cheap  Victuals,  and  pay  the  Money  back  again  in  Four 
years."  —  YARRANTON:  England's  Improvement  by  Sea  and  Land,  London, 
1677,  p.  182, 


OF    CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  321 

merchants,  pledged  itself  to  "  discountenance"  that  manufacture, 
with  a  view  to  compel  the  export  of  raw  wool  to  England,  where 
as  its  export  to  foreign  countries  was  prohibited  ;  and  thus  to 
place  the  producers  of  wool  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  English 
makers  of  cloth.  Woollen  cloth,  or  yarn,  was  allowed  to  go  from 
Ireland  to  England  only  through  certain  ports  ;  but  its  export,  as 
well  as  that  of  other  manufactures,  to  the  colonies,  was  entirely 
prohibited.  Irish  ships  were  next  deprived  of  all  participation  in 
the  benefits  of  the  navigation  laws,  as  well  as  excluded  from  the 
fisheries.  Sugar  could  be  imported  only  through  England  ;  and 
as  no  drawback  was  allowed  on  its  exportation  to  Ireland,  the 
latter  was  thus  taxed  for  the  support  of  the  foreign  government, 
while  maintaining  its  own.  All  other  colonial  produce  had  to  be 
carried  first  to  England,  after  which  it  might  be  shipped  to  Ire 
land  ;  and  the  voyage  of  importation  was  required  to  be  made  in 
English  ships,  manned  by  English  seamen,  and  owned  by  English 
merchants  —  thus  increasing  to  the  utmost  the  tax  of  transporta 
tion,  while  denying  to  the  Irish  people  any  participation  in  the 
expenditure  of  the  taxes  thus  collected. 

While  thus,  as  far  as  practicable,  prohibiting  them  from  all 
pursuits  tending  to  the  diversification  of  employments  —  and  thus 
depriving  them  of  the  power  of  combination  for  the  promotion  of 
their  interests — every  inducement  was  held  out  to  them  to  confine 
themselves  to  the  production  of  commodities  required  by  the  Eng 
lish  manufacturers  ;  and  wool,  hemp,  and  flax  were  admitted  into 
England  free  of  duty.  Men,  women,  and  children  were  regarded 
as  instruments  to  be  used  by  trade  ;  and  here,  as  in  Jamaica,  they 
were  to  be  deprived  of  all  employment  except  in  the  labor  of  the 
field ;  and  of  all  opportunity  for  intellectual  improvement,  such 
as  elsewhere  results  from  the  combination  of  agriculture  and  the 
mechanic  arts. 

Pending  the  war  of  the  American  Revolution,  however,  free 
dom  of  commerce  was  claimed  for  Ireland,  and  under  circum 
stances  that  produced  compliance  with  the  demand ;  as  a  conse 
quence  of  which,  changes  were  gradually  made  until  at  length,  in 
IT 83,  her  legislative  independence  came  fully  to  be  admitted. 
First  among  the  measures  then  adopted,  was  the  imposition  of 
duties  on  various  articles  of  foreign  manufacture,  with  the  avowed 
intention  of  enabling  the  Irish  people  to  employ  their  own  surplus 


322  CHAPTER   XII.    §  3. 

labor  in  converting  their  com  and  their  wool  into  cloth ;  and 
thereby  enabling  them  to  carry  into  effect  the  system  so  much 
admired  by  Adam  Smith.  Thenceforward,  commerce  made  rapid 
progress,  and  was  attended  with  corresponding  development  of 
the  intellectual  faculties ;  as  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact,  that 
small  as  was  her  population,  there  existed  so  great  a  demand  for 
books  as  to  have  warranted  the  reproduction  of  all  the  principal 
English  law  reports  of  the  day,  very  many  of  the  earlier  ones,  as 
well  as  the  principal  novels,  travels,  and  miscellaneous  works. 
More  books  were  published  in  Dublin  by  a  single  house,  than 
now,  probably,  are  required  for  the  supply  of  the  kingdom,  not 
withstanding  the  increase  of  population. 

With  1801,  however  —  centralization  being  established  —  there 
came  a  change.  By  the  act  of  Union,  the  copyright  laws  were 
extended  to  Ireland,  and  at  once  the  large,  and  rapidly  growing, 
manufacture  of  books  entirely  disappeared.  The  patent  laws  being 
also  extended  to  that  country,  it  became,  at  once,  clear  that  Irish 
manufactures,  of  every  kind,  must  retrograde.  England  had  the 
home  market,  the  foreign  market,  and  that  of  Ireland  open  to 
her ;  while  the  Irish  manufacturers  were  forced  to  contend  for 
existence,  and  under  the  most  disadvantageous  circumstances,  on 
their  own  soil.  The  former  could  afford  to  purchase  expensive 
machinery,  and  to  adopt  whatever  improvements  might  be  made  ; 
while  the  latter  could  not.  As  a  natural  consequence  of  this, 
Irish  manufactures  gradually  disappeared  as  the  act  of  Union 
took  effect.  By  virtue  of  its  provisions,  the  duties  established  by 
the  Irish  Parliament,  for  the  purpose  of  protecting  the  farmers  of 
Ireland  in  their  efforts  to  bring  the  artisan  into  close  proximity 
with  themselves,  were  gradually  to  diminish,  until  free  trade 
should  fully  be  established ;  or,  in  other  words,  Manchester  and 
Birmingham  were  to  have  a  monopoly  of  supplying  Ireland  with 
cloth  and  iron.  The  duty  on  English  woollens  was  to  continue 
twenty  years.  The  almost  prohibitory  duties  on  English  calicoes 
and  muslins  were  to  continue  until  1808  ;  after  which  they  were 
to  be  gradually  diminished  —  finally  ceasing  in  1821.  Those  on 
cotton-yarn  were  to  cease  hi  1810.  The  effect  of  this  in  diminish 
ing  the  demand  for  Irish  labor  is  shown  in  the  fact,  that  the  master 
woollen  manufacturers  of  Dublin,  who  were  in  1800  no  less  than 
91  in  number,  had  declined  in  1840  to  12  — that  the  hands  em- 


OF    CHANGES   OF    MATTER   IN   PLACE  323 

ployed  had  fallen  in  number  from  4918  to  602  ;  and  that  the 
wool-combers  and  carpet  manufacturers  had  almost  entirely  dis 
appeared.  Such,  too,  was  the  case  in  Cork,  Kilkenny,  Wicklow, 
and  all  other  of  the  seats  of  manufacture.  In  the  first  of  these, 
cotton-spinners,  bleachers,  and  calico-printers  abounded ;  while 
in  the  last,  braid  and  worsted  weavers,  hosiers,  linen  and  woollen 
weavers,  counted  by  thousands;  whereas,  in  1834,  the  whole  num 
ber  of  people  so  employed  did  not  exceed  five  hundred.* 

Deprived  of  all  employment,  except  in  the  labor  of  agriculture, 
land  became,  of  course,  the  great  object  of  pursuit.  "  Land  is 
life,"  had  said,  most  truly  and  emphatically,  Chief  Justice  Black 
burn  ;  and  the  people  had  now  before  them  the  choice  between 
the  occupation  of  land,  at  any  rent,  or  starvation.  The  lord  of 
the  land  was  thus  enabled  to  dictate  his  own  terms ;  and  therefore 
it  has  been,  that  we  have  heard  of  the  payment  of  five,  six,  eight, 
and  even  as  much  as  ten,  pounds  an  acre.  "  Enormous  rents,  low 
wages,  farms  of  an  enormous  extent,  let  by  rapacious  and  indo 
lent  proprietors  to  monopolizing  land-jobbers,  to  be  re-let  by 
intermediate  oppressors,  for  five  times  their  value,  among  the 
wretched  starvers  on  potatoes  and  water,"  led  to  a  constant  suc 
cession  of  outrages,  followed  by  Insurrection  Acts,  Arms  Acts, 
and  Coercion  Acts  ;  when  the  real  remedy  was  to  be  found  in  the 
adoption  of  a  system  that  would  enable  them  to  combine  their 
efforts  together,  and  thus  maintain  the  commerce  that  was  then 
being  sacrificed  at  the  shrine  of  trade. 

That  commerce  may  anywhere  arise,  or  that  it  may  anywhere 

*  "For  nearly  half  a  century  Ireland  has  had  perfectly  free  trade  with 
the  richest  country  in  the  world;  and  what"  —  says  the  author  of  a  recent 
work  of  great  ability — 

"Has  that  free  trade  done  for  her?  She  has  even  now,"  he  continues, 
"no  employment  for  her  teeming  population  except  upon  the  land.  She 
ought  to  have  had,  and  might  easily  have  had,  other  and  various  employ 
ments,  and  plenty  of  it.  Are  we  to  believe,"  says  he,  "the  calumny,  that 
the  Irish  are  lazy  and  "won't  work  ?  Is  Irish  human  nature  different  from 
other  human  nature  ?  Are  not  the  most  laborioxis  of  all  laborers  in  London 
and  New  York,  Irishmen  ?  Are  Irishmen  inferior  in  understanding  ?  We 
Englishmen,  who  have  personally  known  Irishmen  in  the  army,  at  the  bar, 
and  in  the  church,  know  that  there  is  no  better  head  than  a  disciplined  Irish 
one.  But,  in  all  these  cases,  that  master  of  industry,  the  stomach,  has  been 
well  satisfied.  Let  an  Englishman  exchange  his  bread  and  beer,  and  beef 
and  mutton,  for  no  breakfast,  for  a  lukewarm  lumper  at  dinner,  and  no  sup 
per.  With  such  a  diet,  how  much  better  is  he  than  an  Irishman — a  Celt,  as 
he  calls  him  ?  No,  the  truth  is,  that  the  misery  of  Ireland  is  not  from  the 
human  nature  that  grows  there — it  is  from  England's  perverse  legislation, 
past  and  present." — Sophisms  of  Free  Trade,  by  J.  BARNARD  BYLES,  Esq. 


324  CHAPTER   XIT.    §3. 

be  maintained,  there  must  be  differences  among  men,  for  farmers 
do  not  need  to  exchange  potatoes  with  each  other,  however  great 
may  be  their  need  for  the  services  of  the  blacksmith,  the  carpen 
ter,  the  miner,  or  the  miller.  Centralization  was  annihilating  all 
the  differences  that  had  existed,  and  driving  all  the  people  to 
agriculture  ;  and  the  results  obtained  were  precisely  those  which 
might  reasonably  have  been  expected.  The  demand  for  human 
effort,  whether  of  mind  or  of  body,  gradually  ceasing,  millions  of 
people  found  themselves  forced  into  the  position  of  consumers  of 
capital  in  the  form  of  food,  while  totally  unable  to  sell  the  labor 
thence  produced.  Go  where  the  traveller  might,  he  found  hun 
dreds  and  thousands  anxious  to  work,  but  unemployed ;  while 
tens  of  thousands  were  wandering  throughout  Great  Britain,  seek 
ing  to  sell  their  labor  for  the  pittance  by  help  of  which  they  might 
pay  their  rent  at  home.  Interdicted  from  all  pursuits  but  one, 
they  were  compelled  to  waste  more  power  than  would  have  paid, 
a  hundred  times  over,  for  all  the  British  manufactures  they  now 
consumed ;  and  thus  it  was  that  they  became,  as  the  London  Times 
expresses  it,  "iiewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water  for  the 
Saxon."* 

English  writers  assure  us  that  Ireland  has  been  deficient  in  the 
capital  required  for  manufactures ;  but  such  must  always  be  the 
case  with  purely  agricultural  countries.  Nothing  is  required,  in 
any  country,  for  making  capital  abundant,  but  the  existence  of 
that  power  of  combination  which  enables  each  and  every  man  to 
find  a  purchaser  for  his  own  labor,  and  to  become  a  purchaser  of 
that  of  others.  The  power  to  render  either  bodily  or  mental  ser 
vice  is  a  result  of  capital  consumed,  and  it  constitutes  the  capital 
the  laborer  has  to  offer  in  exchange.  When  diversity  of  employ 
ments  exists,  the  motion  of  society  is  rapid,  and  all  that  capital 
reappears  in  the  form  of  new  commodities  ;  but  when  there  is  no 
pursuit  but  agriculture,  the  motion  is  slow,  and  most  of  it  is 

*  "  There  are  nations  of  slaves,  but  they  have,  by  long  custom,  been  made 
unconscious  of  the  yoke  of  slavery.  This  is  not  the  case  with  the  Irish,  who 
have  a  strong  feeling  of  liberty  within  them,  and  are  fully  sensible  of  the 
weight  of  the  yoke  they  have  to  bear.  They  are  intelligent  enough  to  know 
the  injustice  done  them  by  the  distorted  laws  of  their  country;  and  while 
they  are  themselves  enduring  the  extreme  of  poverty,  they  have  frequently 
before  them,  in  the  manner  of  life  of  their  English  landlords,  a  spectacle  of 
the  most  refined  luxury  that  human  ingenuity  ever  invented." — KOHL  :  Tra 
vels  in  Ireland. 


OF    CHANGES   OF    MATTER   IN   PLACE.  325 

wasted.  Millions  of  Irishmen  were  daily  wasting  capital ;  and 
therefore  it  was,  that  capital  was  deficient.  No  such  deficiency 
was  experienced  in  the  period  between  1183  and  1801,  because 
commerce  was  then  steadily  growing  —  producing  a  demand  for 
all  the  physical  and  intellectual  force  of  the  community.  From 
and  after  that  time,  commerce  gradually  declined  until  it  finally 
died  away ;  and  then  was  wasted,  in  each  and  every  year,  an 
amount  of  Irish  capital  equal,  if  properly  applied,  to  the  crea 
tion  of  all  the  cotton  and  ivoollen  machinery  existing  in  Eng 
land.  To  this  enforced  waste  of  capital  we  must  look,  if  we 
desire  to  find  the  cause  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  Irish  nation. 

As  commerce  declined,  the  power  of  the  trader  grew;  and  mid 
dlemen  accumulated  fortunes  that  they  could  not  invest  in  machi 
nery  of  any  kind,  and  would  not  apply  to  the  improvement  of  the 
land  of  Ireland  —  as  a  consequence  of  which,  large  quantities  of 
capital  were,  from  year  to  year,  transferred  to  England.  By  an 
official  document,  it  was  shown,  that  in  the  thirteen  years  follow 
ing  the  final  triumph  of  trade  over  commerce,  in  1821,  the  trans 
fer  of  the  British  public  securities  from  England  to  Ireland 
amounted  to  as  many  millions  of  pounds  sterling ;  and  thus  it 
was  that  cheap  labor  and  cheap  capital  were  forced  to  contribute 
towards  building  up  "the  great  works  of  Britain."  Further,  it 
was  provided  by  law,  that,  whenever  the  poor  people  of  a  neigh 
borhood  contributed  to  a  saving  fund,  the  amount  should  not  be 
applied  in  any  manner  calculated  to  furnish  local  employment ; 
but  should  be  transferred  for  investment  in  the  British  funds.  The 
landlords  fled  to  England,  and  their  rents  followed  them.  The 
middlemen  sent  their  capital  to  England.  The  trader,  or  the 
laborer,  that  could  accumulate  a  little  capital  saw  it  sent  to  Eng 
land  ;  and  he  was  then  compelled  to  follow  it. 

That  centralization,  slavery,  depopulation,  and  death  travel 
always  together,  is  a  fact  whose  proof  is  to  be  found  in  every  page 
of  history;  but  in  none  is  the  proof  more  thorough  and  complete 
than  in  that  which  records  the  story  of  Ireland,  from  the  day  when 
she  ceased  to  have  a  Parliament,  and  became  a  mere  appendage 
to  the  crown  of  England. 

The  form  in  which  rents,  profits,  and  savings,  as  well  as  taxes, 
went  abroad,  was  that  of  raw  products  of  the  soil,  to  be  consumed 
elsewhere  —  yielding  nothing  to  be  returned  to  the  land,  which 


326  CHAPTER   XII.    §  3. 

became,  of  course,  impoverished.  The  export  of  grain  in  the 
first  three  years  following  the  passage  of  the  act  of  Union,  ave 
raged  about  300,000  quarters  ;  but,  as  the  domestic  market  gra 
dually  disappeared,  it  increased,  until  at  the  close  of  thirty  years, 
it  had  attained  an  annual  average  of  two  and  a  half  millions,  or 
22,500,000  of  our  bushels.  The  poor  people  were,  in  fact,  sell 
ing  their  soil  to  pay  for  cotton  and  woollen  goods  that  they 
should  have  manufactured  themselves ;  for  coal  which  abounded 
among  themselves  ;  for  iron,  all  the  materials  of  which  existed  at 
home  in  great  profusion  ;  and  for  a  small  quantity  of  tea,  sugar, 
and  other  foreign  commodities  ;  while  the  amount  required  to  pay 
rent  to  absentees,  and  interest  to  mortgagees,  was  estimated  at 
more  than  thirty  millions  of  dollars.  Here  was  a  drain  that  no 
nation  could  bear,  however  great  its  productive  power ;  and  its 
existence  was  due  to  the  system  which  —  by  forbidding  the  appli 
cation  of  labor,  talent,  or  capital  to  any  thing  but  agriculture  — 
forbade  advance  in  civilization.  The  inducements  to  remain  at 
home  steadily  diminished.  Those  who  could  live  without  labor — 
finding  that  society  had  changed  —  fled  to  England,  France,  or 
Italy.  Those  who  desired  to  work,  and  felt  that  they  were  quali 
fied  for  something  beyond  mere  manual  labor,  fled  to  England  or 
America ;  and  thus  by  degrees  was  the  unfortunate  country  de 
pleted  of  every  thing  that  could  render  it  a  hmne  in  which  to 
remain,  while  those  who  could  not  fly  were  "starving  by  mil 
lions,"*  and  happy  when  a  full-grown  man  could  find  employment 
at  sixpence  a  day,  without  clothing,  lodging,  or  even  food. 

The  existence  of  such  a  state  of  things  was,  said  the  advocates 
of  the  system  which  looks  to  converting  all  the  world,  outside  of 
England,  into  one  great  farm,  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  fact,  that 
the  population  was  too  numerous  for  the  land  ;  and  yet  a  third  of 
the  surface,  including  the  richest  lands  in  the  kingdom,  was  lying 
unoccupied  and  waste.  "  Of  single  counties,"  said  an  English 

*  "  Throughout  the  west  and  south  of  Ireland,  the  traveller  is  haunted  by 
the  face  of  the  popular  starvation.  It  is  not  the  exception — it  is  the  condition 
of  the  people.  In  this  fairest  and  richest  of  countries,  men  are  suffering  and 
starving  by  millions.  There  are  thousands  of  them,  at  this  minute,  stretched 
in  the  sunshine  at  their  cabin  doors,  with  no  work,  scarcely  any  food,  no  hope 
seemingly.  Strong  countrymen  are  lying  in  bed,  lfor  the  hunger1  —  because 
a  man  lying  on  his  back  does  not  need  so  much  food  as  a  person  afoot. 
Many  of  them  have  torn  up  the  unripe  potatoes  from  their  little  gardens, 
and  to  exist  now  must  look  to  winter,  when  they  shall  have  to  suffer  starva 
tion  and  cold  too." —  Thackeray. 


OF    CHANGES   OF    MATTER   IN   PLACE.  327 

writer,  "Mayo,  with  a  population  of  389,000,  and  a  rental  of 
only  £300,000,  has  an  area  of  1,364,000  acres,  of  which  800,000 
are  waste  !  No  less  than  470,000  acres,  being  very  nearly  equal 
to  the  whole  extent  of  surface  now  under  cultivation,  are  declared 
to  be  reclainiable.  Galway,  with  a  population  of  423,000,  and  a 
valued  rental  of  £433,000,  has  upwards  of  700,000  acres  of  waste, 
410,000  of  which  are  reclainiable  !  Kerry,  with  a  population  of 
293,000,  has  an  area  of  1,186,000  acres  — 727,000  being  waste, 
and  400,000  of  them  reclainiable  !  Even  the  Union  of  Glenties, 
Lord  Monteagle's  ne  plus  ultra  of  redundant  population,  has 
an  area  of  245,000  acres,  of  which  200,000  are  waste,  and  for 
the  most  part  reclaimable,  to  its  population  of  43,000.  The 
Barony  of  Ennis,  that  abomination  of  desolation,  has  230,000 
acres  of  land  to  its  5000  paupers  —  a  proportion  which,  as  Mr. 
Carter,  one  of  the  principal  proprietors,  remarks  in  his  circular 
advertisement  for  tenants,  '  is  at  the  rate  of  only  one  family  to 
230  acres  ;  so  that  if  but  one  head  of  a  family  were  employed  to 
every  230  acres,  there  need  not  be  a  single  pauper  in  the  entire 
district;  a  proof/  he  adds,  '  that  nothing  but  employment  is 
wanting  to  set  this  country  to  rights  /'  In  which  opinion  we 
fully  coincide." 

Nothing  but  employment  — nothing  but  the  power  to  maintain 
commerce — was  needed  ;  but  commerce  could  not  exist  under  the 
system  which  had,  in  a  brief  period,  caused  the  annihilation  of 
the  cotton  manufacture  of  India,  notwithstanding  the  advantage 
of  having  the  cotton  on  the  spot,  free  from  all  cost  for  carriage. 
As  in  Jamaica,  and  as  in  India — the  land  having  been  gradually 
exhausted  by  the  exportation  of  its  products  in  their  rudest  state, 
— the  country  had  been  drained  of  capital ;  as  a  necessary  conse 
quence  of  which  the  labor,  even  of  men,  found  no  demand,  while 
women  and  children  starved,  that  the  women  and  children  of  Eng 
land  might  spin  cotton,  and  weave  cloth,  that  Ireland  was  too 
poor  to  purchase. 

Bad,  however,  as  is  all  we  have  thus  far  seen,  a  state  of  things 
far  worse  was  near  at  hand.  Poverty  and  wretchedness  compel 
ling  the  wretched  people  to  fly  in  thousands  and  tens  of  thou 
sands  across  the  Channel  —  thus  following  the  capital  and  the  soil 
that  had  been  transferred  to  Birmingham  and  Manchester  —  the 
streets  and  cellars  of  those  towns,  and  of  London,  Liverpool,  and 


328  CHAPTER   XII.    §  3. 

Glasgow,  were  filled  with  men,  women,  and  children,  unable  to 
sell  their  labor,  and  perishing  for  want  of  food.  Throughout  the 
country,  men  were  offering  to  perform  the  farm  labor  for  food 
alone;  and  a  cry  arose  among  the  people  of  England,  that  the 
laborers  were  likely  to  be  swamped  by  these  starving  Irishmen  ; 
to  provide  against  which  it  was  needed  that  Irish  landlords 
should  be  compelled  to  support  their  own  poor,  as  they  were 
forthwith  required  by  act  of  Parliament  to  do  —  although  for 
about  half  a  century  previously,  England  had  rung  with  denun 
ciations  of  poor  laws,  as  being  in  entirely  in  contravention  of  all 
sound  economical  principles.  The  system,  however — looking  as 
it  did  to  the  destruction  of  the  power  of  association,  and  to  the 
consequent  waste  of  labor  —  was,  itself,  in  opposition  to  all  such 
principles  ;  and  therefore  was  it,  that  the  action  of  the  legislature 
was  required  to  be  directly  opposed  to  all  that  had  been  taught 
in  the  schools.  The  practice,  under  a  sound  system,  may  be  con 
sistent  ;  but  under  an  unsound  one,  it  cannot  be. 

With  the  passage  of  the  Irish  poor  law,  there  arose,  of  course, 
an  increased  desire  to  rid  the  country  of  people  who,  unable  to 
sell  their  labor,  could  pay  no  rent ;  and  from  that  time  to  the  pre 
sent,  Ireland  has  presented  the  most  shocking  scenes,  consequent 
upon  the  destruction  of  houses  and  the  expulsion  of  their  inhabit 
ants  —  scenes  far  more  worthy  of  the  most  uncivilized  portions  of 
Africa,  than  of  an  integral  portion  of  the  British  Empire.* 

Thus  far,  Irish  agriculture  had  been  protected  in  the  English 
market,  as  some  small  compensation  for  the  sacrifice  of  the  domes 
tic  one ;  but  now,  even  that  boon,  trivial  as  it  was,  was  with 
drawn.  Like  the  people  of  Jamaica,  those  of  Ireland  had  become 
poor,  and  their  trade  had  ceased  to  be  of  value,  although  but 
seventy  years  before  they  had  been  the  best  customers  of  England. 
The  system  having  exhausted  all  the  countries  in  which  commerce 

*  "  In  Galway  Union,  recent  accounts  declared  the  number  of  poor  evicted, 
and  their  houses  levelled,  within  the  last  two  years,  to  equal  the  numbers  in 
Kilrush — 4000  families  and  20,000  human  beings  are  said  to  have  been  here 
also  thrown  upon  the  road,  houseless  and  homeless.  I  can  readily  believe 
the  statement,  for  to  me  some  parts  of  the  country  appeared  like  an  enor 
mous  graveyard  —  the  numerous  gables  of  the  unroofed  dwellings  seemed  to 
be  gigantic  tombstones.  They  were,  indeed,  records  of  decay  and  death  far 
more  melancholy  than  the  grave  can  show.  Looking  on  them,  the  doubt  rose 
in  my  mind,  Am  I  in  a  civilized  country  ?  Have  we  really  a  free  constitu 
tion?  Can  such  scenes  be  paralleled  in  Siberia  or  Caffraria?"  —  Irish 
Journal. 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  329 

had  been  sacrificed  to  trade  —  India,  Portugal,  Turkey,  the  West 
Indies,  and  Ireland  herself — it  had  become  necessary  to  make  an 
effort  to  obtain  markets  in  those  which  had  to  a  greater  or  less 
extent  placed  the  consumer  by  the  side  of  the  producer,  to  wit : 
this  country,  France,  Belgium,  Germany,  and  Russia ;  and  the 
mode  of  accomplishing  this  was  that  of  offering  them  the  same 
system  by  which  Ireland  had  been  exhausted.  The  farmers  were 
everywhere  invited  to  impoverish  their  soil  by  sending  its  pro 
ducts  to  England  to  be  consumed ;  and  the  corn  laws  were 
repealed  for  the  purpose  of  enabling  them  to  enter  into  competi 
tion  with  the  starving  Irishman,  who  was  thus  at  once  deprived 
of  the  market  of  England,  as,  by  the  act  of  Union,  he  had  been 
deprived  of  his  own.  The  cup  of  wretchedness,  before  well-nigh 
full,  was  now  filled.  The  price  of  food  fell,  and  the  laborer  was 
ruined,  for  the  whole  product  of  his  land  would  scarcely  pay  his 
rent.  The  landlord  was  ruined,  for  while  unable  to  collect  rents, 
he  was  heavily  taxed  for  the  support  of  his  impoverished  tenants. 
His  land  was  encumbered  with  mortgages  and  settlements,  created 
when  food  was  high ;  but  he  could  now  no  longer  pay  the  interest 
thereon.  In  this  state  of  things  it  was,  that  the  British  people 
resorted  to  the  revolutionary  measure  of  creating  a  special  court 
for  the  sale  of  all  encumbered  property,  and  the  distribution  of  its 
proceeds  —  thus  furnishing  the  clearest  evidence  of  the  unsound- 
ness  of  the  system  under  which  Ireland  had  been  governed. 

The  impoverished  landholder  now  experienced  the  same  fate 
that  had  befallen  his  poor  tenant ;  and  from  that  date  famine  and 
pestilence,  levellings  and  evictions,  have  been  the  order  of  the 
day.  Their  effect  having  everywhere  been  to  drive  the  poor  peo 
ple  from  the  land,  its  consequences  are  seen  in  the  fact  that  the 
population  numbered,  in  1850,  one  million  six  hundred  and 
fifty -nine  thousand  less  than  it  did  in  1840 ;  while  the  starving 
population  of  the  towns  had  largely  increased.  The  county  of 
Cork  had  diminished  222,000,  while  Dublin  had  grown  in  num 
bers  22,000.  Galway  had  lost  125,000,  while  the  city  had  gained 
7422.  Connaught  had  lost  414,000,  while  Limerick  and  Belfast 
had  gained  30,000.  The  number  of  inhabited  houses  had  fallen 
from  1,328,000  to  1,041,000,  or  more  than  twenty  per  cent. 
Announcing  these  startling  facts,  the  London  Times  stated  that 
" for  a  whole  generation  man  had  been  a  drug  in  Ireland,  and 

VOL.  I.— 22 


330  CHAPTER   XII.    §  3. 

population  a  nuisance."  The  "inexhaustible  Irish  supply  had," 
as  it  continued,  "kept  down  the  price  of  English  labor,  "but  this 
cheapness  of  labor  had  "contributed  vastly  to  the  improvement 
and  power"  of  England,  and  largely  to  "  the  enjoyment  of  those 
who  had  money  to  spend."  Now,  however,  a  change  appeared 
to  be  at  hand,  and  it  was  to  be  feared  that  the  prosperity  of  Eng 
land,  based  as  it  had  been  on  cheap  Irish  labor,  might  be  inter 
fered  with,  as  famine  and  pestilence,  evictions  and  emigration, 
were  thinning  out  the  Celts  who  had  so  long,  as  it  is  said,  fur 
nished  that  "stagnant  weight  of  unemployed  population,"  by 
help  of  which  English  capital  had  obtained  so  entire  a  control  of 
the  labor  of  England. 

To  the  stagnation  resulting  from  the  absence  of  differences 
among  the  various  portions  of  the  community  all  these  effects  are 
due.  The  whole  system  tends  to  separate  the  consumer  from  the 
producer,  and  to  augment  to  the  highest  degree  the  taxation  inci 
dent  to  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place  ;  and  to  this 
are  due  the  exhaustion  of  Ireland,  the  ruin  of  its  landholders,  the 
starvation  of  its  people,  and  the  degradation  of  the  country  which 
has  furnished  to  the  continent  its  best  soldiers,  and,  to  the  empire, 
not  only  its  most  industrious  and  intelligent  laborers,  but  also  its 
Burke,  its  Grattan,  its  Sheridan,  and  its  Wellington.  English 
journals,  nevertheless,  rejoice  at  the  gradual  disappearance  of  the 
native  population,  and  find  in  ' '  the  abstraction  of  the  Celtic  race 
at  the  rate  of  a  quarter  of  a  million  a  year,  a  surer  remedy  for  the 
inveterate  Irish  disease  than  any  human  wit  could  have  imagined." 

The  "  disease"  here  spoken  of  is  a  total  absence  of  demand  for 
labor,  resulting  from  the  unhappy  determination  of  the  people  of 
England  to  destroy  the  power  of  association  throughout  the  world. 
The  sure  remedy  for  it  is  found  in  famines,  pestilences,  and  expa 
triation,  the  necessary  results  of  that  exhaustion  of  the  land  which 
follows  the  exportation  of  its  products  in  their  rudest  state.  A 
stronger  confirmation  of  the  destructive  character  of  such  a  course 
of  policy  to  the  people  of  England  themselves,  than  is  contained 
in  the  following  paragraph,  could  scarcely  be  imagined  :— 

"When  the  Celt  has  crossed  the  Atlantic,  he  begins  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life  to  consume  the  manufactures  of  this  country, 
and  indirectly  to  contribute  to  its  customs.  We  may  possibly 
live  to  see  the  day  when  the  chief  product  of  Ireland  will  be  cat- 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  331 

tie,  and  English  and  Scotch  the  majority  of  her  population.  The 
nine  or  ten  millions  of  Irish  who  by  that  time  will  have  settled  in 
the  United  States,  cannot  be  less  friendly  to  England,  and  will 
certainly  be  much  better  customers  to  her  than  they  now  are.?'* 

When  the  Celt  leaves  Ireland,  he  leaves  an  almost  purely  agri 
cultural  country,  and  in  such  countries  man  is  always  little  better 
than  a  slave.  Coming  here,  he  finds  himself  in  a  country  in  which 
to  some  little  extent  the  farmer  and  the  artisan  have  been  enabled 
to  come  together ;  and  here  he  becomes  a  freeman,  and  a  customer 
of  England. 

That  the  nation  that  commences  by  exporting  raw  products 
must  end  by  exporting  men,  is  proved  by  the  following  figures, 
furnished  by  the  last  four  censuses  of  Ireland  : — 

1821,  population,  6,801,827 

1831,  »  7,767,491  — Increase,     965,574 

1841,  «  8,175,124  — Increase,     407,723 

1851,  "  6,515,794  — Decrease,  1,659,330 

To  what  causes  may  this  extraordinary  course  of  events  be  attri 
buted  ?  Certainly  not  to  any  deficiency  of  land,  for  nearly  one- 
third  of  the  whole  surface  —  including  millions  of  acres  of  the 
richest  soils  of  the  kingdom  —  remains  in  a  state  of  nature.  Not 
to  original  inferiority  of  the  soil  in  cultivation,  for  it  has  been 
confessedly  among  the  richest  in  the  empire.  Not  to  a  deficiency 
of  mineral  ores  or  fuel,  for  coal  abounds,  and  iron  ores  of  the 
richest  kind,  as  well  as  those  of  other  metals,  exist  in  vast  profu 
sion.  Not  to  any  deficiency  in  the  physical  qualities  of  the  Irish 
man — it  being  an  established  fact  that  he  is  capable  of  performing 
far  more  labor  than  the  Englishman,  the  Frenchman,  or  the  Bel 
gian.  Not  to  a  deficiency  of  intellectual  ability — Ireland  having 
given  to  England  her  most  distinguished  soldiers  and  statesmen  ; 
and  having  throughout  the  world  furnished  evidence  that  the  Irish 
man  is  capable  of  the  highest  intellectual  improvement.  Never 
theless,  while  possessed  of  every  natural  advantage,  he  is,  at 
home,  a  slave  to  the  severest  taskmasters,  and  in  a  condition  of 
poverty  and  distress  such  as  is  exhibited  in  no  other  portion  of 
the  civilized  world.  No  choice  being  left  him  but  between  expa 
triation  and  starvation,  we  see  him,  everywhere,  abandoning  the 
*  London  Times. 


332  CHAPTER   XII.    §  3. 

home  of  his  fathers,  to  seek  elsewhere  that  subsistence  which  Ire 
land —  rich  as  she  is  in  soil  and  in  her  minerals,  in  her  navigable 
rivers,  and  in  her  facilities  for  communication  with  the  world — can 
no  longer  afford  him. 

The  value  of  land  and  labor  being  altogether  dependent  upon 
the  power  to  maintain  commerce — and  that  power  having  no  ex 
istence  in  Ireland  —  the  reader  can  now  have  little  difficulty  in 
understanding  why  both  are  there,  as  well  as  in  Turkey,  Portu 
gal,  and  Jamaica,  so  nearly  valueless.  Neither  can  be  utilized, 
because  of  the  enormous  extent  to  which  they  are  subjected  to  that 
heaviest  of  all  taxes  —  the  one  resulting  from  a  necessity  for 
dependence  on  ships,  wagons,  and  all  other  of  the  machinery  of 
trade  and  transportation.  In  his  recent  work  on  Ireland,  Cap 
tain  Head  speaks  of  a  property  containing  10,000  acres,  that  had 
been  purchased  at  five  cents  an  acre  ;  and  in  a  paper  read  before 
the  Statistical  Section  of  the  British  Association,  it  was  shown 
that  the  estates  then  purchased  in  Ireland,  by  English  capital,  em 
braced  403,065  acres  ;  the  purchase-money  had  been  £1,095,000, 
or  about  £2  15s.  ($13  20)  per  acre  —  being  little  more  than  is 
paid  for  farms,  with  very  moderate  improvements,  in  the  new 
States  of  the  Mississippi  Valley. 

The  sugar  of  the  laborer  of  Jamaica  exchanges  in  Manchester 
for  three  shillings,  of  which  he  receives  perhaps  one ;  and  he 
perishes  because  of  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  clothing,  or  the 
machinery  by  help  of  which  to  make  it.  The  Hindoo  sells  his 
cotton  for  a  penny  a  pound,  and  buys  it  back,  in  the  form  of 
cloth,  at  eighteen  or  twenty  pence.  The  Virginia  negro  raises 
tobacco  that  exchanges  for  six  shillings'  worth  of  commodities,  of 
which  he  and  his  owner  obtain  threepence  —  all  the  difference  be 
ing  absorbed  by  the  various  persons  who  live  by  trade,  and  stand 
in  the  way  of  commerce.  The  Irishman  raises  chickens  which 
sell  in  London  for  shillings,  of  which  he  receives  pence  ;  and  thus 
sugar  that  has  yielded  the  free  negro  of  Jamaica  a  penny,  com 
mands  in  the  west  of  Ireland  a  pair  of  chickens,  or  a  dozen  lob 
sters.*  Having  studied  these  facts,  the  reader  will  be  at  no  loss 

*  The  enormous  loss  incident  to  the  wide  separation  of  the  consumer  from 
the  producer,  is  thus  exhibited  by  Captain  Head  : — 

"  'Chickuns  are  about  5d.  a  couple — docks,  IQd.  A  couple  of  young  gaise, 
lOrf. ;  when  auld,  not  less  than  Is.  or  14c?.' 

"  'And  turkeys?'  I  asked. 


OF    CHANGES   OF    MATTER   IN    PLACE.  333 

to  understand  the  destructive  effects  on  the  value  of  land  and  labor 
resulting  from  the  absence  of  markets,  such  as  arise  naturally  where 
the  plough  and  the  loom  are  permitted,  in  accordance  with  the 
doctrines  of  Adam  Smith,  to  take  their  places  by  each  other's 
side.  More  than  seventy  years  since,  that  great  man  denounced 
the  system  which  looked  to  compelling  the  exports  of  raw  pro 
duce,  as  one  productive  of  infinite  injustice ;  and,  certainly,  the 
histories  of  Jamaica  and  Virginia,  Ireland  and  India,  since  his 
time,  would  afford  him,  were  he  now  present,  little  reason  for 
changing  the  opinions  then  expressed. 

§  4.  It  is  usual  to  ascribe  the  state  of  things  now  existing  in 
Ireland  to  the  rapid  growth  of  population — that  in  its  turn  being 
charged. to  the  account  of  the  potato,  the  excessive  use  of  which, 
as  Mr.  McCulloch  informs  his  readers,  has  lowered  the  standard 
of  living,  and  tended  to  the  multiplication  of  men,  women,  and 
children.  "The  peasantry  of  Ireland  live,"  as  he  says,  ''in 
miserable  mud  cabins,  without  either  a  window  or  a  chimney,  or 
any  thing  that  can  be  called  furniture,"  and  are  distinguished 
from  their  fellow-laborers  across  the  Channel  'by  their  "filth  and 
misery ;"  and  hence,  in  his  opinion,  it  is  that  they  work  for  low 
wages.*  We  have  here  effect  substituted  for  cause.  The  absence 
of  demand  for  labor  causes  wages  to  be  so  low,  that  the  laborer 
can  obtain  nothing  but  mud  cabins  and  potatoes.  It  is  admitted 
everywhere  throughout  the  continent  of  Europe,  that  the  intro 
duction  of  the  potato  has  tended  greatly  to  the  improvement  of 
the  condition  of  the  people ;  but  then,  there  is  no  portion  of  the 
continent  in  which  it  constitutes  an  essential  part  of  the  national  po 
licy  to  deprive  millions  of  people  of  all  mode  of  employment  except 
agriculture  —  thus  placing  those  millions  at  such  a  distance  from 
market,  that  the  chief  part  of  their  labor  and  its  products  is  lost 
in  the  effort  to  reach  it ;  and  that  their  land  is  exhausted  because 

"  '  I  can't  say ;  we  haven't  many  of  thim  in  the  counthry,  and  I  don't  want 
to  tell  yere  Arn'r  a  lie.  Fish,  little  or  nothing.  A  large  turbot,  of  80  pounds 
weight,  for  3*.  Lobsters,  a  dozen  for  4d.  Soles,  2d.  or  3d.  a-piece.  T'other 
day  I  bought  a  turbot,  of  15  pounds  weight,  for  a  gentleman,  and  I  paid  ISd. 
for  ut.'  "  -  Walks  and  Talks  in  Ireland,  p.  178. 

"  '  What  do  you  pay  for  your  tea  and  sugar  here  ?'  I  inquired. 

«  <  Very  dare,  sir,'  he  replied.  'We  pay  5s.  for  tea,  5d.  for  brown  sugar, 
and  Sd.  for  white;  that  is,  if  we  buy  a  single  pound.'"  —  Ibid,  p.  187. 

*  Treatise  on  Wages,  p.  33. 


334  CHAPTER    XII.    §  4. 

of  the  impossibility  of  returning  to  the  soil  any  of  the  elements  of 
which  its  crops  are  composed.  Trading  centralization  produces 
all  these  effects.  It  looks  to  the  destruction  of  the  value  of  labor 
and  land,  and  to  the  enslavement  of  man.  It  tends  to  the  divi 
sion  of  the  whole  population  into  two  classes,  separated  by  an 
impassable  gulf — the  mere  laborer  and  the  land-owner.  It  tends 
to  the  destruction  of  the  power  of  association  for  any  purpose  of 
improvement,  whether  by  the  making  of  roads  or  the  founding  of 
schools  ;  and,  of  course,  to  the  prevention  of  the  growth  of  towns, 
as  we  see  to  have  been  the  case  with  Jamaica,  so  barbarous  in 
this  respect  when  compared  with  Martinique  or  Cuba  —  islands 
whose  governments  have  not  looked  to  the  perpetual  divorce  of 
the  artisan  and  the  agriculturist. 

The  decay  of  towns  in  Ireland,  subsequent  to  the  Union,  led  to 
absenteeism,  and  thus  added  to  the  exhaustion  of  the  land — Irish 
wheat  being  now  needed  to  pay  not  only  for  English  cloth,  but  for 
English  services  ;  and  the  more  the  centralization  resulting  from 
absenteeism,  the  greater,  necessarily,  was  the  difficulty  attendant 
upon  the  maintenance  of  the  productive  powers  of  the  soil.  Mr. 
McCulloch,  however,  assures  his  readers,  that  "it  is  not  easy  to 
imagine  any  grounds  for  pronouncing  the  expenditure  of  the  rent 
at  home  more  beneficial "  to  the  country  than  if  it  had  been  ex 
pended  abroad.*  By  another  distinguished  political  economist  we 
are  told  that  — 

"  Many  persons"  are  "perplexed  by  the  consideration  that  all 
the  commodities  which  are  exported  as  remittances  of  the  absen 
tee's  income  are  exports  for  which  no  return  is  obtained ;  that 
they  are  as  much  lost  to  this  country  as  if  they  were  a  tribute  paid 
to  a  foreign  state,  or  even  as  if  they  were  periodically  thrown  into 
the  sea.  This  is  unquestionably  true  ;  but  it  must  be  recollected 
that  whatever  is  unproductively  consumed,  is,  by  the  very  terms 
of  the  proposition,  destroyed,  without  producing  any  return.  "•(• 

The  view  is,  as  the  reader  will  see,  based  upon  the  idea  of  the 
total  destruction  of  the  commodities  consumed.  Were  it  even 
correct,  it  would  still  follow  that  there  had  been  transferred  from 
Ireland  to  England  a  demand  for  services  of  a  thousand  kinds, 
tending  to  cause  a  rise  in  the  price  of  labor  in  the  one  and  a  fall 

*  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  p.  157. 

f  SENIOR:  Outlines  of  Political  Economy,  p.  160. 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER  IN   PLACE.  335 

in  the  other ;  but  if  it  were  altogether  incorrect,  it  would  then 
follow,  necessarily,  that  the  loss  to  the  country  would  be  as  great 
as  if  the  remittances  were  "  a  tribute  paid  to  a  foreign  state,  or 
even  as  if  they  were  periodically  thrown  into  the  sea. "  That  the 
latter  is  the  case  the  reader  may  readily  convince  himself.  Man 
consumes  much,  but  he  destroys  nothing.  In  eating  food,  he  is 
merely  acting  as  a  machine  for  preparing  the  elements  of  which  it 
is  composed,  for  future  production ;  and  the  more  he  can  take  out 
of  the  land,  the  more  he  can  return  to  it,  and  the  more  rapid  will 
be  the  improvement  in  the  productive  power  of  the  soil. 

If  the  market  is  near,  he  takes  hundreds  of  bushels  of  turnips, 
carrots,  or  potatoes,  or  tons  of  hay,  from  an  acre  of  land  —  vary 
ing  the  character  of  his  culture  from  year  to  year ;  and  the  more, 
he  borrows  from  the  great  bank  the  more  he  can  repay  to  it,  the 
more  he  can  improve  his  mind  and  his  cultivation,  and  the  more 
readily  he  can  command  improved  machinery,  by  aid  of  which  to 
obtain  still  increased  returns.  If,  however,  the  market  is  distant, 
he  must  raise  only  those  things  that  will  bear  carriage,  and  thus 
is  he  limited  in  his  cultivation ;  and  the  more  he  is  limited  the 
more  rapidly  does  he  exhaust  his  land,  the  less  is  his  power  to 
obtain  roads,  to  have  association  with  his  fellow-men,  to  obtain 
books,  to  improve  his  mode  of  thought,  to  purchase  machinery, 
or  to  make  roads.  Such  is  the  case  even  when  he  is  compelled 
to  sell  and  buy  in  distant  markets ;  but  still  worse  is  it  when,  as  in 
the  case  of  rents  paid  to  an  absentee,  nothing  is  returned  to  the 
land.  Production  then  diminishes  without  a  corresponding  dimi 
nution  of  the  rent  —  the  poor  laborer  being  daily  more  and  more 
thrown  upon  the  mercy  of  the  landlord,  or  his  agent,  and  becom 
ing  more  and  more  subjected  to  his  will.  The  proportion  of  rent 
then  rises,  but  its  quantity  declines.  The  value  of  commodities 
increases,  but  that  of  man  diminishes — and  with  every  step  in  this 
direction  we  witness  a  growing  tendency  to  depopulation,  such  as 
has  been  exhibited  in  Turkey,  Portugal,  Jamaica,  and  especially 
in  Ireland. 

We  are  told  of  the  principle  of  population,  in  virtue  of  which 
men  increase  faster  than  food ;  and,  for  evidence  that  such  must 
always  be  the  case,  are  pointed  to  the  fact,  that,  when  men  are 
few  in  number,  they  always  cultivate  the  rich  soils,  and  then  food 
is  abundant ;  but,  that,  as  population  increases,  they  are  forced 


336  CHAPTER  xn.  §  4. 

to  resort  to  the  poor  soils,  when  food  becomes  scarce.  That  the 
contrary  of  all  this  is  true,  is  shown  by  the  history  of  England, 
France,  Italy,  Greece,  India,  and  most  especially  by  the  fact  that 
Ireland  possesses  millions  of  acres  of  the  most  fertile  soil  remain 
ing  in  a  state  of  nature,  and  so  likely  to  remain  until  she  shall  have 
markets  for  their  produce  —  enabling  their  owners  readily  to  ex 
change  turnips,  potatoes,  cabbages,  and  hay,  for  cloth,  machinery, 
and  MANURE. 

It  is  singular  that  modern  political  economy  should  so  entirely 
have  overlooked  the  fact  that  man  is  a  mere  borrower  from  the 
earth,  and  that  when  he  does  not  pay  his  debts,  she  does  as  do  all 
other  creditors — expelling  him  from  his  holding.  England  makes 
of  her  soil  a  grand  reservoir  for  the  waste  yielded  by  the  sugar, 
coffee,  wool,  indigo,  cotton,  and  other  raw  commodities  of  almost 
half  the  world  —  thus  obtaining  manure  that  has  been  valued  at 
five  hundred  millions  of  dollars  a  year,  or  five  times  more  than 
the  value  of  the  cotton  crop  produced  by  so  many  millions  of 
people  in  this  country  ;  and  yet  so  important  is  that  commodity, 
that  she  imports  in  a  single  year  more  than  two  hundred  thousand 
tons  of  guano,  at  a  cost  of  almost  two  millions  of  pounds,  or  ten 
millions  of  dollars.  Nevertheless,  her  writers  teach  other  nations 
that  the  true  mode  of  becoming  rich  is  to  exhaust  the  land  by 
sending  from  it  all  its  products  in  their  rudest  state ;  and  then, 
when  the  Irishmen  attempt  to  follow  the  soil  that  has  been  sent  to 
England,  the  world  is  assured  by  Mr.  McCulloch  that — 

"  The  unexampled  misery  of  the  Irish  people  is  directly  owing 
to  the  excessive  augmentation  of  their  numbers;  and"  that 
"  nothing  can  be  more  perfectly  futile  than  to  expect  any  real  or 
lasting  amendment  of  their  situation  until  an  effectual  check  has 
been  given  to  the  progress  of  population.  It  is  obvious  too,"  he 
continues,  ''that  the  low  and  degraded  condition  into  which  the 
people  of  Ireland  are  now  sunk  is  the  condition  to  which  every 
people  must  be  reduced  whose  numbers  continue,  for  any  con 
siderable  period,  to  increase  faster  than  the  means  of  providing 
for  their  comfortable  and  decent  subsistence."* 

Such  is  the  erroneous  view  to  which  men  of  high  ability  are  led 
by  the  Malthusian  doctrine,  that  man — the  being  of  highest  deve 
lopment  —  tends  to  increase  more  rapidly  than  potatoes,  turnips, 
*  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  p.  383. 


OF    CHANGES   OF    MATTER  IN   PLACE.  337 

fish,  and  oysters,  the  things  of  lowest  development,  on  which  he 
feeds ;  and  by  the  Ricardo  doctrine,  that  it  is  upon  the  fertile 
soils  that  men  begin  the  work  of  cultivation.  All  Ireland  proves 
that  the  richest  soils  are  yet  undrained  and  uncultivated  —  that 
those  in  cultivation  have  been  exhausted  by  reason  of  the  necessity 
imposed  upon  their  owners  for  sending  away  their  produce,  in  its 
rudest  state  —  and  that  the  real  cause  of  difficulty  is  to  be  found 
in  the  annihilation  of  the  power  to  maintain  commerce,  and  con 
sequent  destruction  of  the  capital  daily  consumed  in  the  mainte 
nance  of  so  many  millions  of  human  beings  —  compelled  to  waste 
their  days  in  idleness,  when  they  would  so  gladly  be  at  work. 
"  How, "  asks  the  Times,  "  are  they  to  be  fed  and  employed?" 
"That, "  as  it  continues,  "is  the  question  which  still  baffles  an 
age  that  can  transmit  a  message  round  the  world  in  a  moment  of 
time,  and  point  out  the  locality  of  a  planet  never  yet  seen.  There 
is  the  question  which  founders  both  the  bold  and  the  wise." 

It  is,  nevertheless,  a  question  readily  answered.  Let  them  have 
commerce  —  let  them  be  emancipated  from  the  dominion  of  trade 
—  and  they  will  find  at  once  a  demand  for  their  powers,  whether 
mental  or  intellectual.  All  then  meeting  purchasers  for  what  they 
have  to  part  with,  all  will  be  able  to  become  purchasers  of  the 
labor  of  others  —  their  friends  and  neighbors,  and  the  wives  and 
children  of  those  friends.  What  Ireland  needs  is,  the  motion  of 
society  —  the  power  of  combination  —  which  results  from  differ 
ences  in  the  modes  of  employment.  Let  her  have  that,  and  she 
will  cease  to  export  food,  while  her  people  perish  of  famine  at 
home.*  Give  her  that,  and  —  her  land  ceasing  to  be  impove 
rished  by  the  extraction  and  exportation  of  its  most  valuable  ele 
ments — her  people  will  be  both  "  fed  and  employed  ;"  and  then, 
the  doctrine  of  over-population  will  cease  to  find  support  in  the 
harrowing  details  of  Irish  history. 

*  The  exports  of  food  from  Ireland  in  1849,  '50,  '51  —  years  in  which 

famine  and  pestilence  combined  to  limit  the  growth  of  population  —  were  as 
follows : — 

Year.                       Wheat,  qrs.  Flour,  qrs.                 Live  stock,  No. 

1849  844,000  1,176,000  520,000 

1850  751,000  1,055,000  475,000 

1851  850,000  823,000  472,000 


338  CHAPTER   XIH.    §  1. 


CHAPTER    XIII. 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT  CONTINUED. 

§  1.  IN  no  part  of  the  world  has  there  existed  a  greater  tend 
ency  to  voluntary  association,  the  distinguishing  mark  of  freedom, 
than  in  INDIA.  In  none  did  the  smaller  communities  to  a  greater 
extent  exercise  the  power  of  self-government.  Each  village  had 
its  distinct  organization,  and  under  its  simple  and  "almost  patri 
archal  arrangements,  the  natives  of  Hindoostan  seem  to  have 
lived  from  the  earliest,  down,  comparatively  speaking,  to  late 
times — if  not  free  from  the  troubles  and  annoyances  to  which  men 
in  all  conditions  of  society  are  more  or  less  subject,  still  in  the  full 
enjoyment,  by  each  individual,  of  his  property,  and  of  a  very  con 
siderable  share  of  personal  liberty. "  *  *  "Leave 
him  in  possession  of  the  farm  which  his  forefathers  owned,  and 
preserve  entire  the  institutions  to  which  he  had  from  infancy  been 
accustomed,  and  the  simple  Hindoo  would  give  himself  no  con 
cern  whatever  as  to  the  intrigues  and  cabals  which  took  place  at 
the  capital.  Dynasties  might  displace  one  another ;  revolutions 
might  recur ;  and  the  persons  of  his  sovereigns  might  change 
every  day;  but  so  long  as  his  own  little  society  remained  undis 
turbed,  all  other  contingencies  were  to  him  subjects  scarcely  of 
speculation."  "  Perhaps  there  are  not  to  be 
found  on  the  face  of  the  earth  a  race  of  human  beings  whose 
attachment  to  their  native  place  will  bear  a  comparison  with  that 
of  the  Hindoos.  There  are  no  privations  which  the  Hindoo  will 
hesitate  to  bear,  rather  than  voluntarily  abandon  the  spot  where 
he  was  born  ;  and  if  continued  oppression  drive  him  forth,  he  will 
return  to  it  again  after  long  years  of  exile  with  fresh  fondness."* 

The  Mohammedan  conquest  left  these  simple  and  beautiful  in 
stitutions  untouched.     "  Each  Hindoo  village,"  says  Col.  Briggs, 
in  his  work  on  the  land  tax,  "  had  its  distinct  municipality,  and 
GREIG  :  History  of  British  India,  vol.  i.  p.  46. 


OF    CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  339 

over  a  certaiu  number  of  villages,  or  district,  was  an  hereditary 
chief  and  accountant,  both  possessing  great  local  influence  and 
authority,  and  certain  territorial  domains  or  estates.  The  Mo 
hammedans  early  saw  the  policy  of  not  disturbing  an  institution 
so  complete,  and  they  availed  themselves  of  the  local  influence  of 
these  officers  to  reconcile  their  subjects  to  their  rule." 

Local  action,  and  local  combination,  are  everywhere  conspicu 
ous  in  the  history  of  India.  Having  numerous  rulers,  some  of 
whom,  to  a  certain  extent,  acknowledged  the  superiority  of  the 
distant  sovereign,  the  taxes  required  for  the  support  of  govern 
ment  were  heavy,  but — being  locally  expended  —  if  the  cultivator 
contributed  too  large  a  portion  of  his  grain,  it  was  at  least  con 
sumed  in  a  neighboring  market,  and  nothing  went  from  off  the 
land.  Manufactures,  too,  were  widely  spread,  and  thus  was  made 
a  demand  for  the  labor  not  required  in  agriculture.  "  On  the 
coast  of  Coromandel,"  said  Orme,*  "and  in  the  province  of  Ben 
gal,  when  at  some  distance  from  a  high  road  or  principal  town,  it 
is  difficult  to  find  a  village  in  which  every  man,  woman,  and  child 
is  not  employed  in  making  a  piece  of  cloth.  At  present,"  he  con 
tinues,  "much  the  greatest  part  of  whole  provinces  are  employed 
in  this  single  manufacture."  Its  progress,  as  he  said,  included 
"  no  less  than  a  description  of  the  lives  of  half  the  inhabitants  of 
Hindostan." 

While  employment  was  thus  locally  subdivided,  and  neighbor 
was  thus  enabled  to  exchange  with  neighbor,  the  exchanges  be 
tween  the  producers  of  food,  or  of  salt,  in  one  part  of  the  coun 
try,  and  the  producers  of  cotton  and  manufacturers  of  cloth  in 
another,  tended  to  the  production  of  commerce  with  more  distant 
men — whether  within,  or  without,  the  limits  of  India  itself.  Ben 
gal  was  celebrated  for  the  finest  muslins,  the  consumption  of  which 
at  Delhi,  and  in  Northern  India  generally,  was  large ;  while  the 
Coromandel  coast  was  equally  celebrated  for  the  best  chintzes 
and  calicoes — leaving  to  Western  India  the  manufacture  of  strong 
and  inferior  goods  of  every  kind.  Under  these  circumstances,  it 
is  no  matter  of  surprise  that  the  country  was  rich,  and  that  its 
people,  though  often  over-taxed,  and  sometimes  plundered  by  in 
vading  armies,  were  prosperous  in  a  high  degree. 

*  Historical  Fragments,  London,  1805,  p.  409. 


340  CHAPTER    XIII.    §  1. 

From  the  date  of  the  battle  of  Plassey,  by  the  event  of  which 
British  power  was  established  in  India,  centralization  grew 
rapidly,  and,  as  usual  in  such  cases,  the  country  became  filled 
with  adventurers,  very  many  of  whom  were  wholly  without  prin 
ciple —  men  whose  sole  object  was  that  of  the  accumulation  of 
fortune  by  any  means,  however  foul ;  as  is  well  known  to  all  fami 
liar  with  the  indignant  denunciations  of  Burke.*  England  was 
thus  enriched  as  India  became  impoverished,  and  as  centraliza 
tion  became  more  and  more  established. 

Step  by  step,  the  power  of  the  Company  was  extended,  and 
everywhere  was  adopted  the  Hindoo  principle,  that  the  sovereign 
—  as  proprietor  of  the  soil,  and  sole  landlord  —  was  entitled  to 
one-half  of  the  gross  produce  of  the  land.  Under  the  earlier 
Mohammedan  sovereigns,  this  land  tax,  now  designated  as  rent, 
had  been  limited  to  a  thirteenth,  and  from  that  to  a  sixth ;  but  in 
the  reign  of  Akbar  (sixteenth  century)  it  was  fixed  at  one-third — 
numerous  other  taxes  being  then  abolished.  With  the  decline 
and  gradual  dissolution  of  the  empire,  the  local  sovereigns  had 
not  only  increased  it,  but  had  also  revived  the  taxes  that  had 
been  discontinued  —  while  instituting  others  of  a  most  oppressive 
kind  all  of  which  were  continued  by  the  Company — while  allow 
ing  no  reduction  of  the  rent.f  Further,  the  Company  —  having 
a  monopoly  of  trade  —  could  dictate  the  prices  of  all  it  had  to 
sell,  as  well  as  of  all  that  it  needed  to  buy  ;  and  here  was  another 

*  "  The  country  was  laid  waste  with  fire  and  sword,  and  that  land  distin 
guished  above  most  others  by  the  cheerful  face  of  fraternal  government  and 
protected  labor,  the  chosen  seat  of  cultivation  and  plenty,  is  now  almost 
throughout  a  dreary  desert  covered  with  rushes  and  briers,  and  jungles  full 
of  wild  beasts."  "  That  universal,  systematic  breach 

of  treaties,  which  had  made  the  British  faith  proverbial  in  the  East !  These 
intended  rebellions  are  one  of  the  Company's  standing  resources.  When 
money  has  been  thought  to  be  hoarded  up  anywhere,  its  owners  are  univer 
sally  accused  of  rebellion,  until  they  are  acquitted  of  their  money  and  their 
treasons  at  once !  The  money  once  taken,  all  accusation,  trial,  and  punish 
ment  ends." — Speech  on  Fox's  East  India  Bill. 

f  "Wherever  the  British  power  supplanted  that  of  the  Mohammedans  in 
Bengal,  we  did  not,  it  is  true,  adopt  the  sanguinary  part  of  their  creed  ;  but 
from  the  impure  fountain  of  their  financial  system  did  we,  to  our  shame, 
claim  the  inheritance  to  a  right  to  seize  upon  half  the  gross  produce  of  the 
land  as  a  tax ;  and  wherever  our  arms  have  triumphed,  we  have  invariably 
proclaimed  this  savage  right :  coupling  it,  at  the  same  time,  with  the  sense 
less  doctrine  of  the  proprietary  right  to  these  lands  being  also  vested  in  the 
sovereign,  in  virtue  of  the  right  of  conquest."  —  EJCKARDS  :  India,  vol.  i. 
p.  275. 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MxlTTER   IN   PLACE.  341 

and  most  oppressive  tax,  imposed  for  the  benefit  of  absentee  land 
lords.* 

With  the  farther  extension  of  power,  the  demands  on  the  Com 
pany's  treasury  increased  without  an  increase  of  means  with  which 
to  meet  them  —  exhaustion  being  a  natural  consequence  of  absen 
teeism,  or  centralization ;  as  has  so  well  been  proved  in  Ireland. 
The  ability  to  pay  taxes  being  in  course  of  diminution,  there  was 
thus  produced  a  necessity  for  resorting  to  the  creation  of  a  sort 
of  landed  aristocracy,  that  should  be  responsible  to  the  govern 
ment  for  their  payment ;  for  which  purpose  the  private  rights  of 
the  small  proprietors  were  sacrificed  in  favor  of  the  Zemindars, 
hitherto  mere  officers  of  the  crown.  Become,  now,  great  landed 
proprietors,  the  latter  were  constituted  masters  of  a  host  of  poor 
tenants,  holding  their  lands  at  will,  and  liable  to  torture  and 
punishment  of  every  kind,  if  they  failed  to  pay  a  rent  to  whose 
amount  the  only  limit  was  found  in  deficiency  of  power  to  compel 
its  payment.  The  middleman  system  of  Ireland,  and  of  the  West 
Indies,  was  thus  transplanted  to  India. 

At  first,  however,  it  worked  unfavorably  to  the  Zemindars 
themselves,  the  rents  for  which  they  had  become  bound  being  so 
entirely  out  of  proportion  to  the  ability  of  the  poor  tenants,  that 
even  torture  could  not  compel  their  payment ;  and  but  a  few 
years  elapsed  before  they  in  turn  were  sold  out,  to  make  way  for 
another  set,  "  as  keen  and  as  hard-hearted  as  they  themselves  had 
been."  That  system  having  failed  to  answer  the  purpose,  it  was 
next  determined  to  arrest  the  extension  of  the  permanent  settle 
ment,  and  to  settle  with  each  little  ryot,  or  cultivator,  to  the 
entire  exclusion  of  the  village  authorities,  by  whom,  under  the 
native  governments,  the  taxes  had  uniformly  been  so  equitably 

*  "The  misgovernment  of  the  English  was  carried  to  a  point  such  as 
seemed  hardly  compatible  with  the  existence  of  society.  They  forced  the 
natives  to  buy  dear  and  sell  cheap.  They  insulted  with  impunity  the  tribu 
nals,  the  police,  and  the  fiscal  authorities  of  the  country.  Enormous  for 
tunes  were  thus  rapidly  accumulated  at  Calcutta,  while  30,000,000  of  human 
beings  were  reduced  to  the  extremity  of  wretchedness.  They  had  been  ac 
customed  to  live  under  tyranny,  but  never  under  tyranny  like  this.  They 
found  the  little  finger  of  the  Company  thicker  than  Surajah  Dowlah's  loins. 
Under  their  old  masters,  they  had  at  least  one  resource :  when  the  evil  be 
came  insupportable,  the  people  rose  and  pulled  down  the  government.  But 
the  English  government  was  not  to  be  so  shaken  off.  That  government, 
oppressive  as  the  most  oppressive  form  of  barbarian  despotism,  was  strong 
with  all  the  strength  of  civilization.  It  resembled  the  government  of  evil 
genii,  rather  than  the  government  of  human  tyrants." — Macaulay 


342  CHAPTER   XIII.     §  1. 

distributed.  The  perfectly  centralized  ryotwar  system  was  thus 
established,  and  how  it  has  operated  may  be  judged  from  the  fol 
lowing  sketch,  presented  by  Mr.  Fullerton,  a  member  of  the 
Council  at  Madras  : — 

"  Imagine  the  revenue  leviable  through  the  agency  of  one  hun 
dred  thousand  revenue  officers,  collected  or  remitted  at  their  dis 
cretion,  according  to  the  occupant's  means  of  paying,  whether 
from  the  produce  of  his  land  or  his  separate  property ;  and  in 
order  to  encourage  every  man  to  act  as  a  spy  on  his  neighbor, 
and  report  his  means  of  paying,  that  he  may  eventually  save  him 
self  from  extra  demand,  imagine  all  the  cultivators  of  a  village 
liable  at  all  times  to  a  separate  demand,  in  order  to  make  up  for 
the  failure  of  one  or  more  individuals  of  the  parish.  Imagine 
collectors  to  every  county,  acting  under  the  orders  of  a  board,  on 
the  avowed  principle  of  destroying  all  competition  for  labor  by  a 
general  equalization  of  assessment,  seizing  and  sending  back  run 
aways  to  each  other.  And,  lastly,  imagine  the  collector  the  sole 
magistrate  or  justice  of  the  peace  of  the  county,  through  the  me 
dium  and  instrumentality  of  whom  alone  any  criminal  complaint 
of  personal  grievance  suffered  by  the  subject  can  reach  the  supe 
rior  courts.  Imagine,  at  the  same  time,  every  subordinate  officer 
employed  in  the  collection  of  the  land  revenue  to  be  a  police  offi 
cer,  vested  with  the  power  to  fine,  confine,  put  in  the  stocks,  and 
flog  any  inhabitant  within  his  range,  on  any  charge,  without  oath 
of  the  accuser  or  sworn  recorded  evidence  of  the  case."* 

Under  such  a  system,  there  could  be  no  circulation  —  no 
commerce ;  and,  without  that,  there  could  be  neither  force  nor 
progress.  Exert  himself  as  he  might,  the  poor  cultivator  found 
that  the  profits  of  his  exertion  were  required  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Company's  treasury  —  an  increase  of  rent  at  once  being  claimed 
whenever  increase  of  products  had  been  obtained.  In  some  dis 
tricts,  the  government's  share  is  stated  to  have  been  no  less  than 
sixty  or  seventy  per  cent,  of  the  whole  ;  and  yet,  to  this  were  fur 
ther  added,  taxes  upon  all  the  machinery  in  use  —  requiring 
interferences  of  the  most  inquisitorial  kind,  and  forbidding  all 
improvement.  In  settling  the  taxes  paid  by  looms,  it  was 
required  that  the  weaver  should  report  how  many  children  he 
had,  and  what  assistance  they  rendered  him ;  and  the  more  they 
*  Quoted  in  Thompson's  Lectures  on  India,  p.  61. 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  343 

all  exerted  themselves,  the  higher  became  the  amount  of  contri 
bution.* 

The  oil-mill,  the  potter's  kiln,  the  goldsmith's  tools,  the  saw 
yer's  saw,  the  blacksmith's  anvil,  the  carpenter's  tools,  the  cotton- 
beater's  bow,  the  weaver's  loom,  and  the  fisherman's  boat  —  all 
were  taxed.  No  machinery  of  any  description  was  allowed  to 
escape ;  and  to  guard  against  the  employment  of  untaxed  labor, 
either  in  cultivation  or  manufactures,  large  allowances  were  made 
to  informers,  with  a  view  to  induce  those  who  did  not  desire  to 
work  to  become  spies  on  those  who  did  —  and  this  system  is  still 
in  force. \ 

§  2.  The  tendency  thus  far  has  been,  as  we  see,  to  sweep  away 
the  rights  not  only  of  kings  and  princes,  but  of  all  the  native 
authorities,  and  to  centralize  in  the  hands  of  foreigners  in  Cal 
cutta  the  power  to  determine  for  the  cultivator,  the  artisan,  or  the 
laborer,  what  work  he  should  do,  and  how  much  of  its  products 
he  might  retain  —  thus  placing  the  latter  in  precisely  the  position 
of  a  mere  slave  to  people  who  —  having  no  interest  in  him  but 
simply  as  a  tax-payer  —  were  represented  by  strangers  in  the 
country,  whose  authority  was  everywhere  used  by  the  native  offi 
cers  in  their  employ,  to  enable  them  to  amass  fortunes  for  them 
selves. 

The  poor  manufacturer,  as  heavily  taxed  as  the  cultivator  of 
the  earth,  found  himself  compelled  to  obtain  advances  from  his 
employers,  who,  in  their  turn,  claimed,  as  interest,  a  large  pro 
portion  of  the  little  profit  that  was  made.  The  Company's 
agents,  like  the  native  merchants,  advanced  the  funds  necessary  to 
produce  the  goods  required  for  Europe  ;  and  the  poor  workmen 
are  described  as  having  been  "in  a  state  of  dependence  almost 
amounting  to  servitude,  enabling  the  resident  to  obtain  his  labor 
at  his  own  price.  "J 

Further  taxes  were  collected,  at  local  custom-houses,  on  all 

*  RICKARDS  :  India,  vol.  i.  p.  500. 

•j-  "  Fifty  per  cent,  on  the  assessment  is  allowed  as  a  reward  to  any  infor 
mer  of  concealed  cultivation,  &c. ;  and  it  is  stated  that  there  are,  '  in  almost 
every  village,  dismissed  accountants  desirous  of  being  re-employed,  and  un 
employed  servants  who  wish  to  bring  themselves  to  notice,'  whose  services 
as  informers  can  be  relied  on." — CAMPBELL:  Modern  India,  London,  1852, 
p.  356. 

J  BAINES  :  History  of  the  Cotton  Manufacture. 


344  CHAPTER    XIII.    §  2. 

exchanges  between  the  several  parts  of  the  country ;  and  to  these 
were  again  added  others  imposed  by  means  of  monopolies  of 
opium  and  tobacco  ;  as  well  as  of  salt,  one  of  the  most  import 
ant  necessaries  of  life.  The  manufacture  of  coarse  salt  from  the 
earth  was  strictly  prohibited.*  The  salt  lakes  of  the  upper 
country  furnish  a  supply  so  great  that  it  is  of  little  value  on  the 
spot  ;f  but  they  being  even  yet  in  the  possession  of  native  princes, 
the  monopoly  could  then,  and  can  now,  be  maintained  only  by  aid 
of  strong  bands  of  revenue  officers,  whose  presence  renders  that 
which  is  almost  worthless  on  one  side  of  an  imaginary  line  so 
valuable  on  the  other,  that  it  requires  the  produce  of  the  sixth 
part  of  the  year's  labor  to  enable  the  poor  Hindoo  to  purchase 
salt  for  his  family.  Along  the  sea-shore,  it  is  abundantly  fur 
nished  by  nature — the  solar  heat  causing  its  constant  deposition ; 
but  the  mere  fact  of  its  collection  was  constituted  an  offence  pun 
ishable  by  fine  and  imprisonment ;  and  the  quantity  collected  by 
the  Company's  officers  was  limited  to  that  required  for  meeting 
the  demand  at  a  monopoly  price  —  all  the  remainder  being  regu 
larly  destroyed,  lest  the  poor  ryot  should  succeed  in  obtaining  for 
himself,  at  cost,  such  a  supply  as  was  needed  to  render  palatable 
the  rice  which  constituted  almost  his  only  food.  The  system  has 
since  been  rendered  less  oppressive,  but  the  mere  money  tax,  even 
now,  is  ten  times  greater  than  it  was  under  enlightened  Moham 
medan  sovereigns  |  —  but,  if  we  add  to  this  that  the  poor  ryot  is 
forced  to  waste  the  labor  that  might  be  employed  in  collecting 
the  salt  his  family  requires  to  consume,  it  will  be  seen  that  the 
loss  in  this  single  case  is  enormous  in  amount. 

Under  the  native  princes,  the  produce  of  taxation  was  locally 
expended  —  producing  a  demand  for  commodities,  or  services,  at 
home ;  but,  under  the  centralized  system  that  now  exists,  it  is 
required'  to  go  abroad,  to  be  employed  in  purchasing  the  services, 
or  paying  the  dividends,  of  distant  people ;  and  thus  is  the  real 
weight  of  taxation  almost  indefinitely  increased  by  the  destruction 
of  the  power  of  association  and  combination.  Commerce  is,  thus, 
everywhere  sacrificed  to  trade.  § 

*  CAMPBELL:  Modern  India,  p.  382.         f  Ibid.  p.  381.         J  Ibid.  p.  105. 

%  The  difference  between  an  absentee  landlord  expending  at  a  distance  all 
his  rents,  and  a  resident  one  distributing  them  again  among  his  tenants  in  ex 
change  for  services,  and  the  difference  in  the  value  of  the  products  of  the 
land  resulting  from  proximity  to  market,  are  so  well  exhibited  in  the  follow- 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  345 

§  3.  Cotton  abounded  ;  and  to  so  great  an  extent,  half  a  cen 
tury  since,  was  the  labor  of  men,  women,  and  children  applied  to 
its  conversion  into  cloth,  that,  even  with  their  imperfect  machi 
nery,  they  not  only  supplied  the  home  demand  for  the  beautiful 

ing  passage  from  a  recent  work  on  India,  that  the  reader  cannot  fail  to  profit 
by  its  perusal : — 

"The  great  part  of  the  wheat,  grain,  and  other  exportable  land  produce 
which  the  people  consume,  as  far  as  we  have  yet  come,  is  drawn  from  our 
Nerbudda  districts,  and  those  of  Malwa  which  border  upon  them ;  and,  par 
consequent,  the  price  has  been  rapidly  increasing  as  we  recede  from  them  in 
our  advance  northward.  Were  the  soil  of  those  Nerbudda  districts,  situated 
as  they  are  at  such  a  distance  from  any  great  market  for  their  agricultural 
products,  as  bad  as  it  is  in  the  parts  of  Bundelcund  that  I  came  over,  no  net 
surplus  revenue  could  possibly  be  drawn  from  them  in  the  present  state  of 
arts  and  industry.  The  high  prices  paid  here  for  land  produce,  arising  from 
the  necessity  of  drawing  a  great  part  of  what  is  consumed  from  such  distant 
lands,  enables  the  rajahs  of  these  Bundelcund  states  to  draw  the  large  reve 
nue  they  do.  These  chiefs  expend  the  whole  of  their  revenue  in  the  main 
tenance  of  public  establishments  of  one  kind  or  other ;  and  as  the  essential 
articles  of  subsistence,  wheat  and  grain,  &c.,  which  are  produced  in  their 
own  districts,  or  those  immediately  around  them,  are  not  sufficient  for  the 
supply  of  these  establishments,  they  must  draw  them  from  distant  territories. 
All  this  produce  is  brought  on  the  backs  of  bullocks,  because  there  is  no  road 
from  the  districts  whence  they  obtain  it  over  which  a  wheeled  carriage  can 
be  drawn  with  safety ;  and,  as  this  mode  of  transit  is  very  expensive,  the 
price  of  the  produce,  when  it  reaches  the  capitals,  around  which  these  local 
establishments  are  concentrated,  becomes  very  high.  They  must  pay  a  price 
equal  to  the  collective  cost  of  purchasing  and  bringing  this  substance  from 
the  most  distant  districts  to  which  they  are  at  any  time  obliged  to  have  re 
course  for  a  supply,  or  they  will  not  be  supplied ;  and  as  there  cannot  be 
two  prices  for  the  same  thing  in  the  same  market,  the  wheat  and  grain  pro 
duced  in  the  neighborhood  of  one  of  these  Bundelcund  capitals  fetch  as  high 
a  price  there  as  that  brought  from  the  most  remote  districts  on  the  banks  of 
the  Nerbudda  river ;  while  it  costs  comparatively  nothing  to  bring  it  from 
the  former  lands  to  the  markets.  Such  lands,  in  consequence,  yield  a  rate 
of  rent  much  greater  compared  with  their  natural  powers  of  fertility  than 
those  of  the  remote  districts  whence  produce  is  drawn  for  these  markets  or 
capitals ;  and  as  all  the  lands  are  the  property  of  the  rajahs,  they  draw  all 
these  rents  as  revenue. 

"  Were  we  to  take  this  revenue,  which  the  rajahs  now  enjoy,  in  tribute  for 
the  maintenance  of  public  establishments  concentrated  at  distant  seats,  all 
these  local  establishments  would  of  course  be  at  once  disbanded ;  and  all  the 
eifectual  demand  which  they  afford  for  the  raw  agricultural  produce  of  dis 
tant  districts  would  cease.  The  price  of  the  produce  would  diminish  in  pro 
portion  ;  and  with  it  the  value  of  the  lands  of  the  districts  around  such  capi 
tals.  Hence  the  folly  of  conquerors  and  paramount  powers,  from  the  days 
of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  down  to  those  of  Lord  Hastings  and  Sir  John 
Malcolm,  who  were  all  bad  political  economists,  in  supposing  that  conquered 
and  ceded  territories  could  always  be  made  to  yield  to  a  foreign  state  the 
same  amount  of  gross  revenue  they  had  paid  to  their  domestic  government, 
whatever  their  situation  with  reference  to  the  markets  for  their  produce  — 
whatever  the  state  of  the  arts  and  their  industry — and  whatever  the  charac 
ter  and  extent  of  the  local  establishments  maintained  out  of  it.  The  settle 
ments  of  the  land  revenue  in  all  the  territories  acquired  in  Central  India 

VOL.  I.— 23 


346  CHAPTER   XIII.    §  3. 

tissues  of  Dacca  and  the  coarse  products  of  Western  India,  but 
exported  to  other  parts  of  the  world  no  less  than  200,000,000  of 
pounds  of  cloth  per  annum.  Exchanges  with  every  part  of  the 
world  were  so  greatly  in  their  favor,  that  a  rupee,  which  would 
now  sell  for  but  Is.  10d,  or  44  cents,  was  then  worth  2s.  Sd.}  or 
64  cents.  The  Company  had  a  monopoly  of  collecting  taxes  in 
India,  but,  in  return  therefor,  it  preserved  to  the  people  the  con 
trol  of  their  domestic  market,  by  aid  of  which  they  were  enabled 

during  the  Mahratta  war,  which  ended  in  1817,  were  made  upon  the  suppo 
sition  that  the  lands  would  continue  to  pay  the  same  rate  of  rent  under  the 
new,  as  they  had  paid  under  the  old,  government,  uninfluenced  by  the  dimi 
nution  of  all  local  establishments,  civil  and  military,  to  one-tenth  of  what 
they  had  been ;  that,  under  the  new  order  of  things,  all  the  waste  lands 
must  be  brought  into  tillage ;  and  be  able  to  pay  as  high  a  rate  of  rent  as 
before  tillage ;  and,  consequently,  that  the  aggregate  available  net  revenue 
must  greatly  and  rapidly  increase!  Those  who  had  the  making  of  the  settle 
ments,  and  the  governing  of  these  new  territories,  did  not  consider  that  the 
diminution  of  every  establishment  was  the  removal  of  ^market — of  an  effectual 
demand  for  land  produce ;  and  that  when  all  the  waste  lands  should  be 
brought  into  tillage,  the  whole  would  deteriorate  in  fertility,  from  the  want 
of  fallows,  under  the  prevailing  system  of  agriculture,  which  afforded  the 
lands  no  other  means  of  renovation  from  over-cropping.  The  settlements 
of  the  land  revenue  which  were  made  throughout  our  new  acquisitions  upon 
these  fallacious  assumptions,  of  course  failed.  During  a  series  of  quinquen 
nial  settlements,  the  assessment  has  been  everywhere  gradually  reduced  to 
about  two-thirds  of  what  it  was  when  our  rule  began ;  and  to  less  than  one- 
half  of  what  Sir  John  Malcolm,  and  all  the  other  local  authorities,  and  even 
the  worthy  Marquis  of  Hastings  himself,  under  the  influence  of  their  opi 
nions,  expected  it  would  be.  The  land  revenues  of  the  native  princes  of 
Central  India,  who  reduced  their  public  establishments,  which  the  new 
order  of  things  seemed  to  reader  useless,  and  thereby  diminished  their  only 
markets  for  the  raw  produce  of  their  lands,  have  been  everywhere  falling 
off  in  the  same  proportion ;  and  scarcely  one  of  them  now  draws  two-thirds 
of  the  income  he  drew  from  the  same  lands  in  1817. 

"  There  are,  in  the  valley  of  the  Nerbudda,  districts  that  yield  a  great 
deal  more  produce  every  year  than  either  Orcha,  Jansee,  or  Duteea ;  and 
yet,  from  the  want  of  the  same  domestic  markets,  they  do  not  yield  one- 
fourth  of  the  amount  of  land  revenue.  The  lands  are,  however,  rated 
equally  high  to  the  assessment,  in  proportion  to  their  value  to  the  farmers 
and  cultivators.  To  enable  them  to  yield  a  larger  revenue  to  the  govern 
ment,  they  require  to  have  larger  establishments  as  markets  for  land  pro 
duce.  These  establishments  may  be  either  public,  and  paid  by  government, 
or  they  may  be  private,  as  manufactories,  by  which  the  land  produce  of 
these  districts  would  be  consumed  by  people  employed  in  investing  the  value 
of  their  labor  in  commodities  suited  to  the  demand  of  distant  markets,  and 
more  valuable  than  land  produce  in  proportion  to  their  weight  and  bulk. 
These  are  the  establishments  Avhich  government  should  exert  itself  to  intro 
duce  and  foster,  since  the  valley  of  the  Nerbudda,  in  addition  to  a  soil 
exceedingly  fertile,  has,  in  its  whole  line  from  its  source  to  its  embouchure, 
rich  beds  of  coal  reposing,  for  the  use  of  future  generations,  under  the  sand 
stone  of  the  Sathpore  and  Vindhya  ranges ;  and  beds  no  less  rich  of  very 
fine  iron.  These  advantages  have  not  yet  been  justly  appreciated ;  but  they 
will  be  so  by-and-by." —  SLEEMAN  :  Rambles  in  India,  vol.  i.  p.  296. 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  34t 

to  conrert  their  rice,  their  salt,  and  their  cotton  into  cloth  that 
could  be  cheaply  carried  to  the  most  distant  countries.  Such 
protection  was  required,  because,  while  England  prohibited  the 
export  of  even  a  single  collier  who  might  instruct  the  people  of 
India  in  the  mode  of  mining  coal  —  of  a  steam-engine  to  pump 
water,  or  raise  their  coal,  or  a  mechanic  who  could  make  one  — • 
of  a  worker  in  iron  who  might  smelt  the  ore  such  vast  bodies  of 
which  exist — of  a  spinning-jenny,  or  power -loom — or,  of  an  arti 
san  who  could  give  instruction  in  the  use  of  such  machines ;  and 
thus  systematically  prevented  them  from  acquiring  control  over 
the  great  forces  of  nature  —  she  at  the  same  time  imposed  very 
heavy  duties  on  the  produce  of  Indian  looms  received  in  England. 
The  day  was  at  hand,  however,  when  that  protection  was  to  dis 
appear.  The  Company  did  not,  it  was  said,  export  sufficiently 
largely  of  the  produce  of  British  industry;  and  in  1813  the  trade 
to  India  was  thrown  open  —  but  the  restriction  on  the  export  of 
machinery  and  artisans  was  maintained  in  full  force  ;  and  thus 
were  the  poor  and  ignorant  people  of  that  country  exposed  to 
competition  with  a  community  possessed  of  machinery  greatly  more 
effective  than  their  own  ;  while  not  only  by  law  deprived  of  the 
power  to  purchase  machinery,  but  also  of  the  power  of  competing 
in  the  British  market  with  the  produce  of  British  looms.  Further 
than  this,  every  loom  in  India,  and  every  machine  calculated  to 
aid  the  laborer,  was  subject  to  a  tax  increasing  in  amount  with 
every  increase  in  the  industry  of  its  owner,  and  generally  absorb 
ing  all  the  profit  resulting  from  its  use.*  Such  were  the  circum- 

*  The  following  humble  petition  of  the  unfortunate  natives  exhibits  in 
full  force  the  character  of  the  system : — 

"CALCUTTA,  September  1,  1831. 
"  To  the  Right  Honorable  the  Lords  of  His  Majesty's  Privy  Council  for 

Trade,  &c. 

"  The  humble  Petition  of  the  undersigned  Manufacturers  and  Dealers  in 
Cotton  and  Silk  Piece  Goods,  the  fabrics  of  Bengal ; 

"  SHOWETH — That  of  late  years  your  Petitioners  have  found  their  business 
nearly  superseded  by  the  introduction  of  the  fabrics  of  Great  Britain  into 
Bengal,  the  importation  of  which  augments  every  year,  to  the  great  preju 
dice  of  the  native  manufacturers. 

"That  the  fabrics  of  Great  Britain  are  consumed  in  Bengal,  without  any 
duties  being  levied  thereon  to  protect  the  native  fabrics. 

"That  the  fabrics  of  Bengal  are  charged  with  the  following  duties  when 
they  are  used  in  Great  Britain : 

"On  manufactured  cottons,  10  per  cent. 
"On  manufactured  silks,  24  per  cent. 
"  Your  Petitioners  most  humbly  implore  your  Lordships'  consideration  of 


348  CHAPTER   XIII.    §  3. 

stances  under  which  the  poor  Hindoo  was  called  upon  to  meet 
unprotected,  the  "unlimited  competition"  of  foreigners  in  his 
own  market.  Four  years  afterwards,  the  export  of  cottons  from 
Bengal  still  amounted  to  £1,659,994  ;  but  ten  years  later,  it  had 
declined  to  £285,121  ;  and  at  the  end  of  twenty  years  we  find  a 
whole  year  to  have  passed  by  without  the  export  of  a  single  piece 
of  cotton  cloth  from  that  country — and  thus  did  commerce  perish 
under  the  oppressive  demands  of  trade. 

When  the  export  of  cotton,  woollen,  steam,  and  all  other  ma 
chinery  was  prohibited,  it  was  done  with  a  view  to  compelling  all 
the  wool  of  the  world  to  come  to  England  to  be  spun  and  woven, 
thence  to  be  returned  to  be  worn  by  those  who  had  raised  it  — 
thus  depriving  all  other  nations  of  the  power  to  apply  their  labor 
except  in  taking  from  the  earth  cotton,  sugar,  indigo,  and  other 
commodities,  for  the  supply  of  the  great  "workshop  of  the 
world."  How  effectually  that  object  has  been  accomplished  in 
India,  will  be  seen  from  the  following  facts  : —  From  the  date  of 
the  opening  of  the  trade,  in  1813,  the  domestic  manufacture,  and 
the  export  of  cloth,  have  gradually  declined,  until  the  latter  has 
finally  ceased  ;  and  the  export  of  raw  cotton  to  England  has  gra 
dually  risen  until  it  had,  six  years  since,  attained  a  height  of 
about  sixty  millions  of  pounds,*  while  the  import  of  twist  from 
England  had  risen  to  twenty-five  millions  of  pounds,  and  of  cloth, 
to  two  hundred  and  sixty  millions  of  yards,  weighing  probably 

these  circumstances,  and  they  feel  confident  that  no  disposition  exists  in 
England  to  shut  the  door  against  the  industry  of  any  part  of  the  inhabitants 
of  this  great  empire. 

"They  therefore  pray  to  be  admitted  to  the  privilege  of  British  subjects, 
and  humbly  entreat"  your  Lordships  to  allow  the  cotton  and  silk  fabrics  of 
Bengal  to  be  used  in  Great  Britain  'free  of  duty,'  or  at  the  same  rate  which 
may  be  charged  on  British  fabrics  consumed  in  Bengal. 

"  Your  Lordships  must  be  aware  of  the  immense  advantages  the  British 
manufacturers  derive  from  their  skill  in  constructing  and  using  machinery, 
whioh  enables  them  to  undersell  the  unscientific  manufacturers  of  Bengal  in 
their  own  country ;  and,  although  your  Petitioners  are  not  sanguine  in  ex 
pecting  to  derive  any  great  advantage  from  having  their  prayer  granted, 
their  minds  would  feel  gratified  by  such  a  manifestation  of  your  Lordships' 
good-will  toward  them ;  and  such  an  instance  of  justice  to  the  natives  of  India 
would  not  fail  to  endear  the  British  government  to  them. 

"They  therefore  confidently  trust  that  your  Lordships'  righteous  conside 
ration  will  be  extended  to  them  as  British  subjects,  without  exception  of  sect, 
country,  or  color. 

"And  your  Petitioners,  as  in  duty  bound,  will  ever  pray." 
[Signed  by  117  natives  of  high  respectability.] 

*  CHAPMAN:   Cotton  and  Commerce  of  India,  London,  1851. 


OF   CHANGES    OF    MATTER   IN    PLACE.  349 

fifty  millions  of  pounds,  which,  added  to  the  twist,  make  seventy- 
five  millions — requiring  for  their  production  somewhat  more  than 
eighty  millions  of  raw  cotton.  We  see  thus  that  every  pound  of 
the  raw  material  sent  to  England  is  returned.  The  cultivator 
receives  for  it  one  penny,  and  pays  for  it,  when  returned  in  the 
form  of  cloth,  from  one  to  two  shillings  —  the  whole  difference 
being  absorbed  in  the  payment  of  the  numerous  brokers,  trans 
porters,  manufacturers,  and  operatives  of  all  descriptions,  that 
have  thus  been  interposed  between  the  producer  and  the  con 
sumer. 

The  power  of  consumption  is  consequently  small ;  and  the 
great  domestic  seats  of  manufacture,  at  which  men,  women,  and 
children  were  accustomed  to  combine  their  labors,  have  disap 
peared.  Dacca,  one  of  the  principal  seats  of  the  cotton  manufac 
ture,  contained  90,000  houses,  but  its  splendid  buildings,  facto 
ries,  and  churches  are  now  a  mass  of  ruins,  and  overgrown  with 
jungle.  The  cotton  of  the  district  found  itself  compelled  to  go 
to  England,  that  it  might  there  be  twisted  and  sent  back  again  — 
thus  performing  a  voyage  of  twenty  thousand  miles  in  search  of 
the  little  spindle  ;  because  it  was  a  part  of  the  British  policy  not 
to  permit  the  spindle,  anywhere,  to  take  its  place  by  the  side  of 
the  cultivator  of  cotton. 

The  change  thus  effected  has  been  shown,  in  official  documents, 
to  have  been  attended  with  ruin  and  distress,  to  which  "no  paral 
lel  can  be  found  in  the  annals  of  commerce."  What  were  the 
means  by  which  it  was  effected  is  shown  in  the  fact  that,  at  the 
time  at  which  it  was  being  accomplished,  Sir  Robert  Peel  stated 
that,  in  Lancashire,  children  were  employed  fifteen  and  seven 
teen  hours  per  day,  during  the  week ;  and  on  Sunday  morning, 
from  six  until  twelve,  in  cleaning  the  machinery.  In  Coventry, 
ninety-six  hours  in  the  week  was  the  time  usually  required ;  and 
of  those  employed,  many  obtained  but  2s.  9cZ.  —  66  cents  —  as  tho 
wages  of  a  week.  The  object  to  be  accomplished  was  that  of 
underworking  the  poor  Hindoo,  and  driving  him  from  the  mar 
ket  of  the  world ;  after  which  he  was  to  be  driven  from  his  own. 

The  mode  of  accomplishment  was  that  of  cheapening  labor the 

laborer,  according  to  modern  doctrines,  being  only  an  instrument 
to  be  used  by  trade. 

With  the  decline  of  Indian  manufactures,  the  demand  for  the 


350  CHAPTER    XIII.    §  3. 

services  of  women  or  children  has  ceased,  and  they  are  forced  either 
to  remain  idle,  or  to  seek  employment  in  the  field ;  and  here  we 
have  one  of  the  distinguishing  marks  of  a  retrocession  towards 
slavery  and  barbarism.  The  men,  too,  who  had  been  accustomed 
to  fill  up  the  intervals  of  other  employments  in  pursuits  connected 
with  the  cotton  manufacture,  were  also  driven  to  the  field  —  all 
demand  for  labor,  physical  or  intellectual,  being  at  an  end,  ex 
cept  so  far  as  it  was  required  for  raising  indigo,  sugar,  cotton,  or 
rice.  This  last  they  were  not  permitted  even  to  clean,  having 
been  debarred  therefrom  by  a  duty  twice  greater  than  that  which 
was  paid  on  paddy,  or  rough  rice,  on  its  import  into  England. 
The  cotton-grower,  after  paying  to  the  government  seventy-eight 
per  cent.*  of  the  product  of  his  labor,  found  himself  deprived  of 
the  power  to  trade  directly  with  the  man  of  the  loom,  and  forced 
into  "unlimited  competition"  with  the  better  machinery  and 
almost  untaxed  labor  of  our  Southern  States  —  thus  being  sub 
jected  to  "the  mysterious  variations  of  foreign  markets,"  in 
which  the  fever  of  speculation  was  followed  by  the  chill  of  revul 
sion,  and  with  a  rapidity  and  frequency  that  set  at  naught  all 
calculation.  If  American  crops  were  small,  his  English  custo 
mers  would  take  his  cotton ;  but  if  they  were  large,  the  Indian 
article  became  a  mere  drug  in  the  market.  To  such  an  extent 
was  this  the  case,  that,  on  one  occasion,  as  was  stated  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  a  Mr.  Turner,  unable  to  find  a  purchaser, 
threw  upon  the  dunghill  cotton  that  had  cost  him  £tOOO. 

With  every  increase  in  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of 
place,  the  motion  of  society — or  commerce — diminishes  ;  and  the 
less  that  motion,  the  greater  must  be  the  quantity  of  labor  and  its 
products  pressing  on  the  market,  to  the  advantage  of  those  who 
live  by  appropriation,  and  to  the  destruction  of  the  value  of  land 
and  labor.  The  direct  effects  of  the  system  above  described  hav 
ing  been  that  of  destroying  commerce  and  diminishing  the  demand 
for  the  laborer's  services,  they,  in  their  turn,  were  followed  by 

*  "  Taking  the  last  six  of  the  thirteen  years,  the  price  of  cotton  was  2d. 
a  pound,  and  if  the  produce  of  a  beegah  was  6s.  6d.,  of  this  the  govern 
ment  took  sixty-eight  per  cent,  of  the  gross  produce ;  and,  taking  the  two 
years  1841  and  1842,  cotton  was  Ifrf.  a  pound,  and  the  produce  of  a  beegah 
was  5s.  Sd.  On  this  the  assessment  was  actually  equal  to  seventy-eight  per 
cent,  on  the  gross  produce  of  the  land."  —  Speech  of  Mr.  Bright  in  the  House 
of  Commons. 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  351 

diminution  of  his  power  to  make  demand  for  cloth,  attended,  neces 
sarily,  by  increase  in  the  quantity  of  cotton  for  which  a  foreign 
market  was  required.  The  more  these  effects  were  produced,  the 
lower  became  the  price  of  cotton ;  and  thus  was  realized  the  effect 
of  an  almost  total  annihilation  of  the  value  of  agricultural  labor, 
as  a  consequence  of  measures  adopted  with  a  view  to  compel  the 
whole  people  to  look  to  agriculture  alone  for  the  means  of  sup 
porting  life.  Further,  while  the  price  of  cotton  has  thus  been 
rendered  wholly  dependent  upon  the  market  of  England,  there, 
too,  is  fixed  the  price  of  cloth  —  the  consequences  of  which  are 
seen  in  the  facts,  that  this  whole  people  has  become  a  mere  instru 
ment  to  be  used  by  trade,  and  that  in  India,  as  in  Ireland,  Por 
tugal,  Turkey,  and  the  West  Indies,  may,  in  most  abundance,  be 
found  the  data  upon  which  to  rest  the  doctrine  of  over-population. 

§  4.  The  poor  ryot  pays,  as  we  see,  twelve,  fifteen,  or  twenty 
pence  for  the  pound  of  cotton  that  had  yielded  him  but  a  single 
penny ;  and  all  this  difference  is  paid  for  the  services  of  others, 
while  he,  himself,  is  unemployed.  "A  great  part  of  the  time 
of  the  laboring  population  in  India  is,"  says  Mr.  Chapman, 
"spent  in  idleness.  I,"  as  he  continues,  "don't  say  this  to 
blame  them  in  the  smallest  degree.  Without  the  means  of  ex 
porting  heavy  and  crude  surplus  agricultural  produce,  and  with 
scanty  means,  whether  of  capital,  science,  or  manual  skill,  for  ela 
borating  on  the  spot  articles  fitted  to  induce  a  higher  state  of 
enjoyment  and  of  industry  in  the  mass  of  the  people,  they  have 
really  no  inducement  to  exertion  beyond  that  which  is  necessary 
to  gratify  their  present  and  very  limited  wishes  :  those  wishes  are 
unnaturally  low,  inasmuch  as  they  do  not  afford  the  needful  sti 
mulus  to  the  exercise  requisite  to  intellectual  and  moral  improve 
ment ;  and  it  is  obvious  that  there  is  no  remedy  for  this  but 
extended  intercourse.  Meanwhile,  probably  the  half  of  the  human 
time  and  energy  of  India  runs  to  mere  waste.  Surely,  we  need 
not  wonder  at  the  poverty  of  the  country."* 

"  Half  the  human  time  and  energy,"  as  we  are  here  told,  "runs 

to  waste, ' '  but  the  author  of  this  passage  might  have  gone  much 

further,  and  yet  been  far  within  the  truth.     Where  there  is  no 

commerce,  and  men  are,  consequently,  forced  to  depend  on  the 

*  CHAPMAX:    Cotton  and  Commerce  of  India,  p.  110. 


352  CHAPTER   XIII.    §  4. 

distant  trade,  nine-tenths  of  the  physical  and  mental  efforts  of  a 
community  "  run  to  waste  ;"  and  therefore  it  is  that  not  only  does 
capital  not  accumulate,  but  the  accumulations  of  past  times  are 
then  in  course  of  daily  diminution.  With  the  decline  in  the 
power  to  maintain  commerce,  there  is  a  daily  increase  in  the 
necessity  for  resorting  to  the  distant  market,  but  with  every  such 
increase  the  commodities  requiring  to  be  transported  increase  in 
bulk  and  decline  in  value  ;  and  therefore  it  is,  that  the  trader  and 
transporter  are  enabled  to  take  for  themselves  a  constantly  increas 
ing  proportion  of  a  diminished  product  —  leaving  a  constantly 
diminishing  one  for  the  cultivator.  Their  cotton  and  their  food 
travelled  readily  to  all  portions  of  the  world  in  the  form  of  cloth, 
and  they  then  consumed  liberally  of  clothing ;  but  now,  when 
their  raw  cotton,  their  rice,  and  their  sugar,  have  to  go  abroad 
in  their  rudest  shapes,  the  quantity  of  finished  commodities  they 
have  the  power  to  pay  for  is  so  small,  that  the  price  paid  for  their 
transportation  scarcely  enters  into  the  compensation  of  the  men, 
oxen,  wagons,  and  ships,  required  for  the  work.  Nearly  the 
whole  burden  of  the  double  voyage  is  therefore  borne  by  the  raw 
material ;  and,  as  in  Turkey,  Portugal,  Ireland,  and  all  other 
agricultural  countries,  the  difficulty  of  making  new  roads,  or  of 
maintaining  old  ones,  increases  from  year  to  year. 

From  important  cotton  districts,  transportation  is  effected  at 
the  rate  of  seven  miles  per  day,  and  requires  more  than  a  hundred 
days  ;  and  if  the  "  herd  of  bullocks  is  overtaken  by  rain,  the  cot 
ton,  saturated  by  moisture,  becomes  heavy,  and  the  black  clayey 
soil,  through  which  lies  the  whole  line  of  road,  sinks  under  the 
feet  of  a  man  above  the  ankle,  and  under  that  of  a  laden  ox  to 
the  knees.  In  this  predicament  the  cargo  of  cotton  lies  sometimes 
for  weeks  on  the  ground,  and  the  merchant  is  ruined."* 

"So  miserably  bad,"  says  another  writer,  "are  the  existing 
means  of  communication  with  the  interior,  that  many  of  the  most 
valuable  articles  of  produce  are,  for  want  of  carriage  and  a  mar 
ket,  often  allowed  to  perish  on  the  farm,  while  the  cost  of  that 
which  found  its  way  to  the  port  was  enormously  enhanced ;  but 
the  quantity  did  not  amount  to  above  twenty  per  cent,  of  the 
whole  of  the  produce,  the  remainder  of  the  articles  always  being 
greatly  deteriorated." 

*  London  Economist. 


OP   CHANGES   OF    MATTER   IN   PLACE.  353 

Such  being  the  modes  of  transportation,  we  can  readily  under 
stand  why  it  is  that  cotton  yields  its  cultivator  but  a  penny  a 
pound  —  and  why,  too,  it  is,  that  the  producer  of  the  more  bulky 
food  is  in  a  condition  that  is  even  worse,  now  that  the  consumer 
has  disappeared  from  his  side.  When  the  crop  is  large,  scarcely 
any  price  can  be  obtained  for  grain  ;*  and  when  it  is  small,  the 
people  perish,  by  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands,  of  famine, 
because,  in  the  existing  state  of  the  roads,  there  can  be  little  or 
no  exchange  of  the  rude  products  of  the  earth. 

§  5.  The  state  of  things  above  described,  results  necessarily 
from  the  maintenance  of  a  system  which  looks  to  the  annihilation 
of  commerce  through  the  exclusion  of  the  great  middle  class  of 
mechanics  and  working-men  ;  and  which  thus  resolves  a  great 
nation  into  a  mass  of  wretched  cultivators  on  the  one  hand,  and 
grasping  money-lenders  on  the  other.  The  chain  of  society  is, 
here,  totally  destitute  of  the  connecting  links,  as  a  consequence 
of  which  there  is  neither  motion  nor  force.  Capital  being 
wasted  weekly  to  an  amount  greater  than  the  annual  value  of  the 
goods  imported,  there  can  be  no  accumulation.  "None,"  says 
Colonel  Sleeman,f  ''have  stock  equal  to  half  their  rent."  They 
are  dependent,  everywhere,  on  the  produce  of  the  year,  and  how 
ever  small  may  be  its  amount,  the  taxes  must  be  paid  ;  and,  of  all 
that  thus  goes  abroad,  nothing  is  returned.  The  soil  gets  no 
thing,  J  and,  as  the  condition  upon  which  the  earth  makes  her 
loans  to  man  is  daily,  hourly,  and  universally  violated,  no  sur 
prise  need  be  felt  on  reading,  in  Colonel  Sleeman's  interesting 
volumes,  the  numerous  evidences  he  has  furnished  of  the  growing 
infertility  of  the  land. 

The  works  constructed  in  former  times,  for  the  purposes  of  irri 
gation,  have  been  allowed  to  go  to  ruin,§  and  the  richest  lands 
are  being  abandoned.  Even  in  the  valley  of  the  Ganges,  not  a 
third  of  the  cultivable  lands  is,  says  Mr.  Chapman,  under  cultiva 
tion  ;  ||  while  elsewhere  he  tells  his  readers,  that  of  the  cultivable 

*  "In  1846  or  1847,  the  collector  was  obliged  to  grant  remission  of  land 
tax,  'because  the  abundance  of  former  years  lay  stagnating  in  the  province, 
and  the  low  prices  of  grain  from  that  cause  prevented  the  ryots  from  being 
able  to  pay  their  fixed  land  assessment.'  " — CHAPMAN:  Cotton  and  Commerce 
of  India,  p.  97. 

f  Rumbles  in  India,  vol.  i.  p.  205.  J  Ibid.  p.  268. 

I  CHAPMAN  :   Cotton  and  Commerce  of  India,  p.  97.  ||  Ibid.  p.  22. 


354  CHAPTER   XIII.    §  5. 

surface  of  all  India,  one-half  is  waste.*  In  the  Madras  presi 
dency,  not  one-fifth  of  the  land  is  cultivated  ;f  and  yet  famines 
are  of  constant  occurrence,  and  of  a  severity  known  in  no  other 
portion  of  the  world,  while  labor  and  land  abound  for  which  no 
employment  can  be  obtained.  The  site  of  the  so  recently  great 
manufacturing  city  of  Dacca,  presented  to  the  view  of  Bishop 
Heber  but  an  "impenetrable  jungle ;"  and  it  is  as  a  necessary 
result  of  this,  that  East  Indian  journals  are  required  to  remind 
their  readers  of  the  millions  of  acres  of  rich  lands  that  might  be 
made  to  yield  cotton  —  that  now  are  lying  waste.  Look  to  what 
quarter  we  may  of  that  magnificent  country,  we  meet  with  evi 
dence  of  declining  individuality  and  diminished  power  of  combi 
nation,  accompanied  by  daily  increasing  centralization,  of  which 
the  annexation  of  Oude  affords  the  most  striking  of  all  the  late 
examples  J  —  and  centralization,  slavery,  and  death  travel  always 
together,  whether  in  the  material  or  the  moral  world. 

When  population  and  wealth  diminish,  the  rich  soils  are  first 
abandoned,  as  is  shown  in  the  Campagna  of  Rome,  in  the  valley 
of  Mexico,  and  in  the  deltas  of  the  Ganges  and  the  Nile.  With 
out  combination  of  eifort,  they  could  never  have  been  brought 
under  cultivation,  and  their  present  abandonment  is  but  the  evi 
dence  of  the  disappearance  of  the  power  of  association  and  com 
bination.  Driven  back  to  the  poor  soils,  and  forced  to  send  abroad 
the  product,  the  wretched  Hindoo  becomes  poorer  from  day  to 
day,  and  the  less  he  obtains,  the  more  does  he  become  a  slave  to 
the  caprices  of  his  landlord  ;  and  the  more  is  he  thrown  upon  the 
mercy  of  the  money-lender,  who  lends  on  good  security  at  three 

*  Cotton  and  Commerce  of  India,  p.  25. 

f  "If  a  ryot  sunk  a  well,  his  rent  was  raised;  if  he  cut  a  small  canal,  it 
was  nearly  doubled.  There  was,  therefore,  no  possibility  of  improvement. 
Moreover,  the  land  being  divided  among  cottiers  whose  only  capital  was  their 
labor,  two  bad  seasons  reduced  them  to  the  verge  of  starvation.  In  such 
cases,  the  whole  revenue  was  occasionally  lost  in  remissions.  Of  course, 
nobody  ever  grew  rich,  and  in  all  the  presidency  there  are  probably  not  ten 
farmers  worth  £1000.  The  area  of  cultivation  is  only  one-fifth  the  area  of 
the  presidency,  and  shows  no  tendency  to  increase."  —  London  Times. 

t  Hitherto,  the  proceeds  of  the  taxation  of  the  people  of  Oude  have  been, 
to  a  considerable  extent,  locally  expended ;  and  have  aided  in  making  a 
demand  for  labor  and  its  products.  Now,  they  are  to  be  transferred  to  Cal 
cutta,  and  are  likely  to  add,  as  we  are  told,  two  millions  of  pounds  to  the 
Company's  revenue.  Taxation,  when  its  proceeds  are  locally  expended,  is 
but  a  question  of  distribution.  When  not  so  expended,  it  is  a  question 
of  exhaustion.  Ten  millions,  in  the  one  case,  would  not  work  as  large  an 
amount  of  ruin,  as  one  in  the  other. 


OF    CHANGES    OF    MATTER    IN    PLACE.  355 

per  cent,  per  month,  but /row-  him  must  have  fifty  or  a  hundred 
per  cent,  for  a  loan  until  harvest.  That,  under  such  circum 
stances,  the  wages  of  labor  are  very  low,  even  where  the  wretched 
people  are  employed,  is  only  what  might  naturally  be  expected. 
In  some  places,  the  laborer  has  two,  and  in  others  three,  rupees, 
or  less  than  a  dollar  and  a  half,  per  month.  The  officers  employed 
on  the  great  zemindary  estates  have  from  three  to  four  rupees,  and 
the  police  receive  but  forty-eight  rupees  ($23)  per  annum,  out  of 
which  they  supply  themselves  with  food  and  clothing  !  Such  are 
the  rewards  of  labor  in  a  country  possessing  every  conceivable  means 
of  accumulating  wealth ;  and  they  become  less  from  year  to  year.  * 

§  6.  Throughout  the  world,  and  in  all  ages,  the  advance 
towards  civilization  having  been  in  the  ratio  of  the  tendency 
towards  local  activity,  and  towards  the  development  of  individual 
faculty,  and  the  system  now  under  consideration  looking  to  re 
sults  directly  the  reverse  of  this,  we  might  reasonably  expect  to 
find,  at  every  step,  an  increasing  tendency  in  the  reverse  direction. 
Growing  civilization  is  marked  by  increased  security  of  person 
and  property,  and  that  increase  is  found  as  we  pass  from  the  old 
possessions  of  the  Company,  and  towards  the  newly-acquired 
ones.f  Crime  of  every  kind,  gang  robbery,  perjury,  and  forgery, 
abound  in  Bengal  and  Madras,  and  the  poverty  of  the  cultivator 

*  "  The  Court  of  Directors  inform  us  that  'there  has  been  a  diminution  in 
the  total  receipts  from  land  in  the  old  provinces  of  Bengal  since  1843—44;' 
and  certainly  no  one  can  be  surprised  to  hear  it.  In  the  Madras  presidency 
the  people  are  wretchedly  poor,  the  land  of  little  value,  and  cultivation  kept 
up  only  by  forced  methods,  the  inhabitants  being  unwilling  to  cultivate  it  on 
any  terms.  In  Bombay,  '  the  receipts  have  fallen  off,  and  the  country  gene 
rally,'  we  are  told,  'is  not  prosperous.'  From  a  member  in  the  council  of 
that  presidency  we  learn  that  India  '  is  verging  to  the  lowest  ebb  of  pauper 
ism;'  and  that  the  payments  to  government  are  made  by  the  inhabitants 
pawning  or  selling  their  personal  ornaments,  and  even  their  cattle,  furni 
ture,  and  tools ;  that  is,  the  capital  of  the  country  is  encroached  upon  to 
pay  the  taxes.  It  was  the  same  officer  who  told  a  parliamentary  committee, 
five  years  since,  that  the  condition  of  the  cultivators  in  India  was  '  greatly 
depressed,  and,  he  feared,  declining.'  The  aristocracy  among  the  natives 
are  sinking  out  of  sight,  the  race  of  native  gentry  has  almost  everywhere 
disappeared,  and  the  peasantry  are  becoming  reckless  through  ruin.  Every 
few  years  a  famine  occurs ;  and  government  spends,  in  hopeless  efforts  to 
keep  the  people  alive,  the  money  which  would  have  made  roads  to  the  gra 
naries,  to  the  ports,  and  to  the  surplus  of  happier  provinces.  Where  food 
should  have  been  passing,  in  exchange  for  other  commodities,  the  way  was 
strewn  with  the  gaunt  corpses  of  half  millions  of  people  starved  to  death." — 
London  Daily  News. 

f  See  Campbell's  Modern  India,  chap.  xi. 


35 G  CHAPTER   XIII.     §  6. 

is  so  extreme,  that  the  revenue  is  there  the  least,  and  is  col 
lected  with  the  greatest  difficulty ;  and  there,  too,  it  is  that  the 
power  of  association  has  been  most  effectually  annihilated.  Pass 
ing  to  the  northwestern  provinces,  more  recently  acquired,  person 
and  property  become  comparatively  secure,  and  the  revenue  in 
creases  ;  but  when  we  reach  the  Punjab — until  recently  subject  to 
the  rule  of  Runjeet  Singh  and  his  successors — we  find  that,  tyrants 
as  he  and  they  have  been  represented,  the  village  communities,  and 
the  beautiful  system  of  association,  have  remained  untouched.  Offi 
cers  of  all  kinds  are  there  more  responsible  for  the  performance  of 
their  duties  than  are  their  fellows  in  the  older  provinces,  and  pro 
perty  and  person  are  more  secure  than  in  any  other  part  of  India. 
Gang  robbery  is  rare,  perjury  is  unfrequent,  and,  as  Mr,  Camp 
bell  assures  his  readers,  a  solemn  oath  is  "  astonishingly  binding." 
"The  longer  we  possess  a  province,"  he  continues,  "the  more 
common  and  general  does  perjury  become; "and  the  stronger, 
consequently,  becomes  the  evidence  of  the  fact  that  the  feeling  of 
responsibility  towards  God  and  man  declines  with  the  decline  of 
individuality  and  the  diminution  of  the  power  of  association. 
That  feeling  grows,  everywhere,  with  the  growth  of  the  power 
to  maintain  commerce,  and  it  declines,  everywhere,  as  man  is 
made  the  mere  instrument  to  be  used  by  trade.  The  "  hill  tribes" 
of  India  are  remarkable  for  their  "strict  veracity,"  "as  little 
falsehood"  being,  says  Colonel  Sleeman,  "spoken  in  the  village 
communities,"  as  in  any  other  part  of  the  world  with  equal  area 
and  population.* 

In  the  newly-acquired  provinces,  the  people  read  and  write 
with  facility,  and  they  are  men  of  physical  and  moral  energy, 
good  cultivators  —  and  understanding  well  both  their  rights  and 
their  duties ;  whereas  from  the  older  ones  education  has  disap 
peared,  and,  with  it,  all  power  to  associate  together  for  any  use 
ful  purpose.  In  the  new  provinces,  commerce  is  large,  as  is 
shown  by  the  following  facts,  representing  the  population  and 
post-office  revenue  of  Bengal,  the  N.  W.  Provinces  and  the  Pun 
jab,  placed  in  the  order  of  their  acquisition  by  the  Company  : — 

Population.  Post-office  revenue. 

Bengal 41,000,000  480,500  rupees. 

N.  W.  Provinces...  24,000,000  978,000      " 

Punjab 8,000,000  178,000      « 

*  Rambles  in  India,  vol.  ii.  p.  109. 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  357 

We  have  here  presented  the  remarkable  fact,  that,  in  the  coun 
try  of  the  Sikhs,  so  long  represented  as  a  scene  of  grasping 
tyranny,  eight  millions  pay  as  much  postage  as  is  paid  by  fifteen 
millions  in  Bengal,  although  in  the  latter  we  find  Calcutta,  the 
seat  of  all  the  operations  of  a  great  centralized  government.  That 
such  should  be  the  case  is  not  extraordinary,  for  the  power  advan 
tageously  to  employ  labor  diminishes  with  the  approach  to  the 
centre  of  British  power,  and  increases  as  we  recede  from  it. 
Idleness  and  drunkenness  go  hand  in  hand  with  each  other,  and 
therefore  it  is  that  Mr.  Campbell  finds  himself  obliged  to  state 
that  "  intemperance  increases  where  our  rule  and  system  has  been 
long  established  ;"*  while  Captain  Westmacott  tells  his  readers 
that  ' '  in  places  the  longest  under  our  rule,  there  is  the  largest 
amount  of  depravity  and  crime." 

Calcutta  grows,  the  city  of  palaces,  but  poverty  and  wretched 
ness  grow  as  commerce  is  more  and  more  sacrificed  for  the  pro 
motion  of  the  interests  of  trade.  Under  the  native  rule,  the  people 
of  each  little  district  could  exchange  with  each  other  —  giving 
food  for  cotton,  or  cotton  cloth,  paying  nobody  for  the  privilege. 
Now,  every  man  must  send  his  cotton  to  Calcutta,  thence  to  go 
to  England  with  the  rice  and  the  indigo  of  his  neighbors  —  before 
he  and  they  can  exchange  food  for  cloth,  or  cotton ;  and  the 
larger  the  quantity  they  send,  the  greater  is  the  tendency  to  de 
cline  in  price.  Centralization  grows  daily,  and  every  stage  of  its 
growth  is  marked  by  increased  inability  to  pay  the  taxes,  and 
increased  necessity  for  seeking  new  markets  in  which  to  sell  cloth 
and  collect  what  are  called  rents  —  and  the  more  wide  the  exten 
sion  of  the  system,  the  greater  is  the  difficulty  of  collecting  reve 
nue  sufficient  for  keeping  in  motion  the  machine  of  government. 
This  it  was,  that  forced  the  representatives  of  British  power  and 
civilization  into  becoming  traders  in  that  pernicious  drug,  opium, 
by  means  of  which  the  people  of  China  are  taxed,  annualty,  to  the 
extent  of  nearly  twenty  millions  of  dollars,  and  not  less  than  half 
a  million  of  lives.  "  The  immolations  of  an  Indian  Jugger- 
nauth,"  says  a  recent  writer,  "dwindle  into  insignificance  before 
it;"  and  yet  for  the  maintenance  of  this  trade  it  was  that  the 
towns  and  cities  of  China  were  sacked,  and  their  people  ruined, 
even  where  not  exterminated.  Trade  and  war  have,  however, 

*  Modern  India,  p.  394. 


358  CHAPTER   XIII.     §  7. 

gone  hand  in  hand  with  each  other  from  the  commencement  of 
the  world,  and  all  their  triumphs  have  been  obtained  at  the  ex 
pense  of  commerce. 

§  7.  The  gross  land  revenue  obtained  from  a  country  with  an 
area  of  491,448  square  miles,  or  above  three  hundred  millions  of 
acres,  is  151,786,743  rupees,  equal  to  fifteen  millions  of  pounds 
sterling,  or  seventy-two  millions  of  dollars.*  What  is  the  value 
of  private  rights  of  property,  subject  to  the  payment  of  this  tax, 
or  rent,  may  be  judged  from  the  following  facts  : — In  1848-49, 
there  were  sold  for  taxes,  in  that  portion  of  the  country  subject  to 
the  permanent  settlement,  1169  estates,  at  something  less  than  four 
years'  purchase  of  the  tax.  Further  south,  in  the  Madras  govern 
ment,  where  the  ryotwar  settlement  is  in  full  operation,  the  land 
"  would  be  sold  "  for  balances  of  rent,  but  "  generally  it  is  not," 
as  we  are  told,  "  and  for  a  very  good  reason,  viz.  that  nobody  will 
buy  it."  Private  rights  in  land  being  there  of  no  value  whatso 
ever,  "the  collector  of  Salem,"  as  Mr.  Campbell  informs  us, 
"  naively  mentions  '  various  unauthorized  modes  of  stimulating  the 
tardy, '  rarely  resorted  to  by  heads  of  villages,  such  as  '  placing 
him  in  the  sun,  obliging  him  to  stand  on  one  leg,  or  to  sit  with 
his  head  confined  between  his  knees.'  "f 

In  the  Northwest  Provinces,  ' '  the  settlement, ' '  as  our  author 
states,  "has  certainly  been  successful  in  giving  a  good  market 
value  to  landed  property ;"  that  is,  it  sells  at  about  "  four  years' 
purchase  on  the  revenue."!  Still  further  north,  in  the  newly- 
acquired  provinces,  we  find  great  industry,  "every  thing"  being 
"turned  to  account ;"  the  assessment — to  which  the  Company  suc 
ceeded  on  the  deposition  of  the  successors  of  Runjeet  Singh — more 
easy  ;  and  land  more  valuable.  §  The  value  of  land,  like  that  of 
labor,  therefore  increases  as  we  pass  from  the  old  to  the  new  set- 

*  Campbell,  p.  377. 

f  CAMPBELL:  Modern  India,  p.  359.  That  torture  of  various  kinds  is  one 
of  the  established  modes  of  collecting  revenue,  is  a  fact  admitted  by  the  Com 
pany,  and  one  to  which  the  attention  of  the  British  Parliament  has  recently 
been  called.  It  being  one,  however,  whose  existence  grows  out  of  the  neces 
sity  of  the  case,  no  remedy  can  be  applied.  The  poverty  of  the  people  grows 
daily,  and  with  that  growth  the  difficulty  of  collecting  revenue  increases  — 
and  whatever  may  be  the  disposition  of  the  governors,  they  must,  under  such 
circumstances,  claim  a  constantly  increasing  proportion  of  the  constantly  de 
creasing  products  of  land  and  labor. 

J  Ibid.  p.  332.  \  Ibid.  p.  345. 


OF    CHANGES   OF    MATTER   IN    PLACE.  359 

tlements,  being  precisely  the  reverse  of  what  would  be  the  case  if 
the  system  looked  to  the  extension  of  commerce ;  and  precisely 
what  should  be  looked  for  in  a  country  in  which  commerce  was 
being  sacrificed  to  trade. 

With  the  data  thus  obtained,  we  may  now  ascertain,  with  per 
haps  some  approach  to  accuracy,  the  value  of  all  the  private 
rights  in  the  land  of  India.  In  no  case  does  that  subject  to  tax 
appear  to  be  worth  more  than  four  years'  purchase ;  while,  in  a 
very  large  portion  of  the  country  it  appears  to  be  worth  abso 
lutely  nothing.  There  being,  however,  some  tax-free  lands,  it  is 
possible  that  the  whole  may  be  worth  four  years'  purchase —  giv 
ing  two  hundred  and  eighty-eight  millions  of  dollars,  or  sixty 
millions  of  pounds  sterling,  as  the  value  of  all  the  rights  in  land 
acquired  by  the  people  of  India  in  the  thousands  of  years  it  has 
been  under  cultivation.  The  few  people  that  have  occupied  the 
little  and  sandy  State  of  New  Jersey,  with  its  area  of  6900  square 
miles,  have  acquired  rights  in,  and  on,  the  land  that  are  valued, 
subject  to  the  claims  of  government,  at  one  hundred  and  fifty 
millions  of  dollars  ;  and  those  of  the  few  that  have  occupied  the 
little  island  on  which  stands  the  city  of  New  York,  would  sell  for 
almost  twice  as  much  as  could  be  obtained  for  all  the  proprietary 
rights  to  land  in  India,  with  three  huudred  millions  of  acres  and 
ninety-six  millions  of  inhabitants  ! 

§  8.  ''Under  the  native  princes,"  says  Mr.  Campbell,  "India 
was  a  paying  country."  Under  absentee  rule,  it  has  ceased  to 
be  so,  and  for  the  reason,  that  under  that  rule  all  power  of  com 
bined  action  has  been  annihilated,  by  aid  of  the  system  that  looks 
to  compelling  the  whole  people,  men,  women,  and  children,  to 
work  in  the  field — producing  commodities  to  be  exported  in  their 
rudest  state.  Every  act  of  association  being  an  act  of  commerce, 
whatever  tends  to  destroy  the  former  must  destroy  the  latter.  The 
internal  commerce  of  India  declines  steadily,  and  the  external  one 
amounts  to  but  fifty  cents  per  head,  and  by  no  eifort  can  it  be 
increased  to  any  extent.  Cuba,  exporting  to  the  large  amount 
of  twenty-five  dollars  per  head  —  or  almost  fifty  times  as  much  as 
India — takes  of  cotton  goods  from  Britain  four  times  as  much  per 
head ;  and  this  she  does  because  it  is  a  part  of  the  policy  of 
Spain  to  bring  about  combination  of  action,  and  to  enable  the 


360  CHArTER  XIII.    §  8. 

planter  and  the  artisan  to  work  together ;  whereas  the  policy  of 
the  former  looks  to  the  destruction,  everywhere,  of  the  power  of 
association,  and  thus,  to  the  annihilation  of  the  domestic  com 
merce  upon  which,  alone,  the  foreign  one  can  be  built.  Centrali 
zation  is  adverse  to  commerce  and  to  the  freedom  of  man.  Spain 
does  not  seek  to  establish  centralization.  Provided  she  receives 
a  given  amount  of  revenue,  she  is  content  to  permit  her  subjects 
to  employ  themselves  at  raising  sugar,  or  making  cloth,  and  thus 
to  advance  in  civilization ;  and  by  this  course  it  is  that  she  is  en 
abled  to  obtain  the  aid  she  needs. 

The  people  of  Jamaica — having  never  been  permitted  to  apply 
their  spare  labor  even  to  the  refining  of  it  —  are  obliged  to 
export  their  sugar  in  its  crudest  state  ;  and  the  more  they  send, 
the  lower  is  the  price,  and  the  larger  the  proportion  taken  by  the 
government ;  but  the  poor  negro  is  ruined.  Spain,  on  the  con 
trary,  permits  the  Cubans  to  engage  in  whatsoever  pursuits  ap 
pear  to  them  likely  to  afford  a  return  to  labor  and  capital ;  and, 
as  a  necessary  consequence  of  this,  towns  and  cities  grow  up,  and 
capital  is  attracted  to  the  land,  which  becomes  from  day  to  day 
more  valuable.  The  power  to  resort  to  other  modes  of  employ 
ment  diminishes  the  necessity  for  exporting  sugar,  and  when 
exported  to  Spain,  the  producer  is  enabled  to  take  for  himself 
nearly  the  whole  price  paid  by  the  consumer,  the  government 
claiming  only  a  duty  of  fifteen  per  cent. 

"  Vast  heaps  of  humanity,  festering  in  compulsory  idleness, 
encumber  the  soil  of  India,"*  because  the  Hindoo,  like  the  negro 
of  Jamaica,  is  shut  out  from  the  workshop.  If  he  attempts  to 
convert  his  cotton  into  yarn,  his  spindle  is  taxed  to  the  extent  of 
all  of  the  profit  it  might  yield  him.  If  he  attempts  to  make  cloth, 
his  loom  is  subjected  to  a  heavy  tax,  from  which  that  of  his 
wealthy  English  competitor  is  exempt.  His  iron  ore  and  his  coal 
must  remain  in  the  ground,  and  if  he  dares  even  to  collect  the  salt 
which  crystallizes  before  his  door,  fine  and  imprisonment  are  the 
reward  of  all  his  labor.  He  must  raise  sugar  to  be  transported 
to  England,  there  to  be  exchanged,  perhaps,  for  English  salt. 
For  the  sugar,  arrived  in  that  country,  the  workman  pays  at  the 
rate  perhaps  of  forty  shillings  a  hundred,  of  which  the  govern 
ment  claims  one-third,  the  ship-owner,  the  merchant,  and  others, 
*  CHAPMAN  :  Cotton  and  Commerce  of  India. 


OF    CHANGES    OF    MATTER   IN    PLACE.  361 

another  third,  and  the  remaining  third  is  to  be  divided  between 
the  agents  of  the  Company,  anxious  for  revenue,  and  the  poor 
ryot,  anxious  to  obtain  a  little  salt  to  eat  with  his  rice,  and  as 
much  of  his  neighbor's  cotton,  in  the  form  of  English  cloth,  as 
will  suffice  to  cover  his  loins. 

Iron,  by  aid  of  which  the  people  might  improve  their  processes 
of  cultivation  and  manufacture,  has  little  tendency  toward  India 
—  the  average  export  of  it  to  that  country  in  1845  and  '46  hav 
ing  been  but  13,000  tons,  value  £160,000  ;  or  about  twopence- 
worth  for  every  live  of  the  population.  Efforts  are  now  being- 
made  for  the  construction  of  railroads,  but  their  object  is  that  of 
carrying  out  the  system  of  centralization,  and  thus  still  further 
destroying  the  power  of  association,  because  they  look  to  the  an 
nihilation  of  what  still  remains  of  domestic  manufacture — and  thus 
cheapening  cotton.  With  all  the  improvements  in  the  transpor 
tation  of  that  commodity,  its  poor  cultivator  obtains  less  for  it 
than  he  did  thirty  years  since  ;  and  the  effect  of  further  improve 
ment  can  be  only  that  of  producing  a  still  further  reduction,  and 
still  further  deterioration  of  the  condition  of  the  men  who  raise 
food  and  cotton.  As  yet,  the  power  of  association  continues  in 
the  Punjab,  but — it  being  proposed  now  to  hold  there  great  fairs 
for  the  sale  of  English  manufactures  —  the  day  cannot  be  far  dis 
tant  when  the  condition  of  the  new  provinces  will  be  similar  to 
that  of  the  old  ones  ;  as  no  effort  is  spared  to  carry  out  the  sys 
tem  which  looks  to  limiting  the  whole  people  to  agriculture,  and 
thus  compelling  exhaustion  of  their  land.  It  is  needed,  says  Mr. 
Chapman,  the  great  advocate  of  railways  in  India,  that  the  con 
nection  between  "the  Indian  grower  and  English  spinner"  become 
more  intimate,  and  "  the  more  the  English  is  made  to  outweigh 
the  native  home  demand,  the  more  strongly  will  the  native  agri 
culturist  feel  that  his  personal  success  depends  on  securing  and 
improving  his  British  connection"* — that  is,  the  more  that  com 
merce  can  be  annihilated,  and  the  more  the  natives  can  be  pre 
vented  from  combining  their  efforts,  the  greater,  as  Mr.  Chapman 
thinks,  will  be  the  prosperity  of  India.  Centralization  has  impo 
verished,  and  to  a  considerable  extent  depopulated,  that  country ; 
but  its  work  is  not  yet  done.  It  remains  yet  to  reduce  the  people 

*  Cotton  and  Commerce  of  India,  p.  86. 

YOL.  I.— 24 


362  CHAPTER   XIII.    §  9. 

of  the  Punjab,  of  Afghanistan,  and  of  Burmah,  to  the  condition 
of  the  Bengalese. 

That  there  is,  throughout  India,  a  steady  decline  in  the  power 
of  association,  in  the  development  of  individuality,  in  the  feeling 
of  responsibility,  and  in  the  capacity  for  progress,  no  one  can 
doubt  who  will  study  carefully  the  books  on  that  country.  By 
several  of  the  persons  that  have  been  quoted  —  Messrs.  Thomp 
son,  Bright,  and  others — the  responsibility  for  all  this  is  charged 
upon  the  Company;  but  none  that  read  the  works  of  Messrs. 
Campbell  and  Sleeman  can  hesitate  to  believe  that  its  direction  is 
now  animated  by  a  serious  desire  to  improve  the  condition  of  its 
poor  subjects.  Unfortunately,  however,  the  Company  is  nearly 
in  the  condition  of  the  landholders  of  Jamaica,  and  is  itself  tend 
ing  towards  ruin,  because  its  subjects  are  limited  to  agriculture, 
and  because  they  receive  so  small  a  portion  of  the  value  of  their 
very  small  quantity  of  products.  Now,  as  in  the  days  of  Joshua 
Gee,  the  largest  portion  remains  in  England,  whose  people  eat 
cheap  sugar  while  its  producer  perishes  of  famine  in  India.  Cheap 
sugar  and  cheap  cotton  are  obtained  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  inte 
rests  of  a  great  nation ;  and  while  the  policy  of  England  shall 
continue  to  look  to  limiting  the  whole  population  of  India  to  the 
labors  of  the  field,  the  soil  must  continue  to  grow  poorer,  the 
power  of  association  must  continue  to  decline,  and  the  govern 
ment  must  find  itself  more  and  more  dependent  on  the  power  to 
poison  the  people  of  China  ;  and  therefore  must  it  be  that,  how 
ever  good  the  intentions  of  the  gentlemen  charged  with  the  duties 
of  government,  they  must  find  themselves  more  and  more  com 
pelled  to  grind  the  poor  ryot  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  revenue. 

§  9.  An  eminent  English  economist  informs  his  readers  that 
notwithstanding  "  the  extreme  cheapness  of  labor  in  India,  and 
the  excellence  to  which  the  natives  had  long  attained, "  "  the 
wonderful  genius  of  our  machinists,  the  admirable  skill  of  our 
workmen,  and  our  immense  capital  have  far  more  than  counter 
vailed  the  apparently  insuperable  drawback  of  high  wages,  and 
have  enabled  our  manufacturers  to  bear  down  all  opposition,  and 
to  triumph  over  the  cheaper  labor,  contiguous  material,  and  tra 
ditional  art  of  the  Hindoos,"  as  a  consequence  of  which  "the 
native  manufacture  has  received  a  shock  from  which  it  is  not 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  3C3 

likely  it  will  ever  recover."*  "From  Smyrna  to  Canton,  from 
Madras  to  Samarcand,"  elsewhere  says  the  same  writer,  "we  are 
supplanting  the  native  fabrics" — and,  of  course,  everywhere  anni 
hilating  that  power  of  association  which  enables  man  to  command 
the  services  of  nature,  and  to  pass  from  a  state  of  slavery  towards 
one  of  freedom. 

Capital  always  grows  as  wages  rise,  and  diminishes  as  wages 
fall.  Wages  always  rise  with  the  decline  in  the  necessity  for 
effecting  changes  of  place,  and  always  decline  as  it  increases. 
The  measures  resorted  to  for  the  destruction  of  the  manufactures 
of  India  looked  to  increasing  that  necessity  on  the  part  of  the 
Hindoo  producer  of  food  and  cotton,  and  thus  inflicting  upon  him 
a  taxation  more  severe  than  any  other  that  could  have  been 
devised  —  and  to  diminishing  it  on  the  part  of  the  British  grower 
of  food,  and  thus  relieving  him  from  the  taxation  to  which  he  had 
before  been  subjected ;  and  the  effect  is  seen  in  the  rise  of  wages 
and  rapid  accumulation  of  capital  in  the  latter,  as  well  as  in  the 
decline  of  wages  and  disappearance  of  capital  in  the  former. 
When,  therefore,  Mr.  McCulloch,  in  thus  enumerating  the  causes 
of  the  change  that  has  taken  place,  omits  to  add  that  further  one 
of  the  exercise  of  power  by  the  strong  over  the  weak  —  of  the 
power  of  the  associated  traders  over  the  scattered  people  who 
desired  to  maintain  commerce  —  he  omits  the  most  important  of 
all  the  elements  of  the  calculation.  The  Hindoo  was  as  capable  of 
applying  the  machinery  of  Arkwright  as  the  Englishman,  and,  had 
the  people  of  England  and  India  been  one,  had  their  rights  been 
held  to  be  equal,  that  machinery  would  have  made  its  way  to  the 
cotton-fields  of  India  —  enabling  its  people  still  more  closely  to 
associate,  still  more  intimately  to  combine  their  operations,  still 
more  fully  to  develop  their  individual  faculties,  and  still  more 
extensively  to  maintain  commerce  at  home  and  abroad.  Under 
such  circumstances,  all  India  would  now  exhibit  a  scene  of  the 
highest  prosperity,  in  place  of  which  we  meet  with  nothing  but  a 
constant  succession  of  famines  and  pestilences,  accompanied  by 
decline  of  individuality  and  of  freedom  —  and  producing  a  neces 
sity  for  a  constant  succession  of  wars  for  the  acquisition  of  new 
territory  in  which  to  trade,  and  constantly  increasing  difficulty  of 

*  McCuLLOCH :   Commercial  Dictionary,  article  Calcutta. 


364  CHAPTER   XIII.    §  9. 

obtaining  the  revenue  by  means  of  which  the  machinery  of  govern 
ment  is  to  be  maintained.* 

The  history  of  the  world  is  but  a  record  of  the  efforts  of  the  few 
who  were  strong,  to  restrain  the  growth  of  the  power  of  associa 
tion  —  to  prevent  the  organization  of  society  —  to  interfere  with 
the  maintenance  of  commerce  —  and  to  retard  the  acquisition  of 
that  power  over  nature  which  constitutes  wealth ;  and  thus  to 
enslave  the  many  who  were  weak.  Its  every  page  presents  evi 
dence  of  the  fleeting  character  of  all  prosperity  obtained  by  aid 
of  measures  in  violation  of  that  great  and  fundamental  law  of 
Christianity  requiring  us  to  respect  the  rights  of  our  neighbor 
as  we  would  have  our  own  to  be  respected ;  but  in  none  is  found 
a  more  instructive  lesson  than  in  that  which  records  the  annihila 
tion  of  commerce  in  India,  and  the  growth  in  England  of  that 
pauperism  which  gave  rise  to  the  doctrine  of  over-population. 
Both  waxed  together,  and  together  both  must  wane  —  the  mea 
sures  required  for  the  relief  of  the  Hindoo  being  precisely  those 
required  for  the  extirpation  of  pauperism  among  the  Britons. 

*  "  We  are  at  war  with  the  Burmese.  Everybody  knows  it,  and,  what  is 
more,  everybody  expects  that  we  should  be  always  at  war  with  some  power 
or  other  in  the  East.  It  was  so  at  Rome.  Everybody  took  it  as  a  matter  of 
course  that  there  were  one  or  two  wars  on  the  confines  of  the  empire  —  with 
the  Carthaginians,  or  the  Mauritanians,  or  the  Celtiberians,  or  the  Helve 
tians,  or  the  Syrians,  or  the  Egyptians ;  and  when  at  last  it  was  found  out, 
one  wonderful  year,  that  such  was  the  terror  of  Rome,  or  the  exhaustion  of 
the  whole  human  race,  that  there  was  no  war  actually  raging,  the  temple  of 
Janus  was  closed  in  state,  games  were  celebrated,  hymns  were  sung,  and  the 
emperor  pronounced  a  present  god.  It  has  been  so  with  all  great  empires." 
*  *  #  "On  the  great  fact  of  this  disgraceful  and  now  disastrous 
war  there  is  no  difference  of  statement.  The  cause  of  the  Burmese  war  is 
not  the  claims  of  the  two  British  captains,  for  they  were  promised  settle 
ment  ;  not  the  conduct  of  the  governor  that  gave  rise  to  those  claims,  for  he 
was  promptly  dismissed ;  not  the  absurd  and  fabulous  grievances  of  the  very 
scum  of  Rangoon  raked  together  by  the  commodore  after  his  arrival,  for  they 
were  never  formally  urged ;  not  any  serious  act  or  refusal  whatever,  but  sim 
ply  and  solely  that  four  officers  of  very  miscellaneous  and  unequal  rank,  who 
had  forced  their  way  into  the  courtyard  of  the  royal  commissioner  without 
previous  arrangement,  and  at  a  very  unusual  time  of  the  day,  were  kept  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  in  the  sun.  Explanations  and  apologies  were  offered  in 
numerable,  but  none  were  received."  —  London  Times. 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  365 


CHAPTER    XIV. 

THE   SAME   SUBJECT   CONTINUED. 

§  1.  THE  reader  has  now  had  placed  before  him  a  picture  of 
the  movements  of  four  considerable  nations,  and  of  one  assem 
blage  of  nations — comprising,  in  the  whole,  two  hundred  millions 
of  people,  or  one-fifth  of  the  total  population  of  the  globe.  All 
of  these  have  been  subject  to  that  system  of  policy  which  looks  to 
the  prevention  of  association,  or  combination ;  and  to  the  main 
tenance  at  its  highest  point  of  that  most  oppressive  of  all  taxes  — 
the  one  resulting  from  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  in  the 
place  of  matter,  and  requiring  ships  or  wagons  for  its  accomplish 
ment.  In  all,  he  has  seen  the  same  results  to  have  been  obtained 
— an  increase  in  the  proportion  of  the  labor  of  the  community  re 
quired  to  be  given  to  the  work  of  transportation  —  an  increase  in 
the  proportions  and  in  the  power  of  the  class  that  lives  by  means 
of  simple  appropriation — a  diminution  in  the  development  of  indi 
vidual  faculty  —  a  diminution  in  the  proportion  of  the  labor  of 
the  community  that  could  be  given  to  increasing  the  quantity  of 
things  susceptible  of  being  transported  or  exchanged  —  a  decline 
of  freedom,  and  a  decay  of  commerce. — Others  might  be  added, 
and  the  list  might  be  so  extended  as  to  embrace  every  country  in 
the  world  in  whicli  the  proportion  of  its  labor  required  to  be 
given  to  the  work  of  transportation  is  an  increasing  one ;  for  it 
is  in  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place  that  is  found 
the  great  obstacle  to  human  improvement,  to  the  development  of 
intellect,  to  the  growth  of  freedom,  and  to  the  increase  of  com 
merce — as  was  so  clearly  seen  by  Adam  Smith  when  urging  npon 
his  countrymen  the  consideration  of  the  advantage  resulting  from 
converting  the  bulky  corn  and  wool  into  the  compact  cloth,  that 
could  so  readily  travel  to  the  remotest  corners  of  the  world 
Whenever  the  course  of  man  is  in  the  direction  that  thus  was  in 
dicated,  and  wherever,  consequently,  he  is  gradually  surmount 
ing  the  obstacles  standing  in  the  way  of  commerce,  the  proportion 


366  CHAPTER   XIV.    §  1. 

borne  by  the  trading  and  transporting  classes  to  the  rest  of  the 
community  is,  necessarily,  a  diminishing  one  ;  and  then  it  is  that 
he  becomes  from  year  to  year  more  civilized.  Whenever,  on  the 
contrary,  the  manufacturer  disappears,  and  wherever  there  is  thus 
produced  an  increased  necessity  for  exporting  commodities  in  an 
unfinished  state,  the  tendency  is  directly  the  reverse  of  this  —  man 
then  relapsing  into  barbarism,  because  of  the  diminished  power 
of  combination.  This  latter  is  the  case  in  all  the  countries  whose 
history  has  above  been  sketched  ;  and  it  is  so  for  the  reason  that 
the  policy  to  which  they  have  been  subjected  is  one  which  looks 
to  having  but  a  single  workshop  for  the  world,  to  which  are  to  be 
sent  all  the  rude  products  of  the  earth,  at  greatest  cost  of  trans 
portation.  In  all  of  them,  consequently,  nature  is  daily  obtain 
ing  greater  power  over  man.  In  all,  wealth  diminishes,  with 
constant  decrease  in  the  value  of  man,  who  becomes  from  year  to 
year  more  and  more  the  slave  of  his  fellow-man. 

It  will,  however,  be  said,  that  the  people  of  India  are  indolent 
— that  those  of  Turkey  are  Mohammedans  and  fatalists,  and  other 
wise  disqualified  from  entering  into  competition  with  those  of  the 
British  isles  —  that  the  Portuguese  and  Irish  peoples  have  a  reli 
gious  faith  that  is  adverse  to  the  development  of  mind  —  that  the 
laborers  of  Jamaica  are  but  little  removed  from  barbarism  —  and 
that  in  facts  like  these  may  be  found  the  causes  of  the  growing 
weakness  of  the  several-  communities  whose  situation  is  above 
described.  The  people  of  the  Turkish  Empire  had,  however, 
precisely  the  same  modes  of  thought  a  century  since  that  they 
have  now,  and  they  clung  to  them  even  more  steadfastly  than  in 
modern  times  ;  and  the  commerce  then  maintained  with  them  was 
accounted  the  most  valuable  portion  of  that  of  Western  Europe. 
The  enlightened  Moors  of  the  south  of  Spain  held  to  a  belief  that 
was  the  same  with  that  of  the  men  who  now  are  found  on  the 
shores  of  the  Hellespont ;  but  there  was  found  therein,  as  we 
know,  no  obstacle  to  the  advance  of  civilization.  The  Portu 
guese  are  no  more  Catholic  than  were  their  predecessors  who 
made  the  Methuen  treaty,  and  whose  commerce  was  deemed  of 
such  high  importance.  They  and  the  Irish  people  hold  to  the 
same  faith  with  those  of  France,  among  whom  agriculture  and 
manufactures  are  now  so  rapidly  advancing,  and  in  whom,  indivi 
duality  is  becoming  so  much  developed.  The  negroes  imported 


OF    CHANGES    OF    MATTER   IN   PLACE.  367 

into  Jamaica  were  no  more  barbarian  than  were  those  received  in 
Virginia  and  Carolina ;  and  yet,  while  each  of  these  latter  is 
represented  by  seven  of  his  descendants,  the  British  islands  pre 
sent  to  view  but  two  for  every  five  that  were  received.  The  rea 
sons  above  referred  to  not  accounting  for  the  state  of  things  that 
has  been  described,  we  must  look  elsewhere  for  the  causes  of  its 
existence. 

Differing  in  religious  faith,  in  color,  in  latitude,  and  in  longi 
tude,  these  communities  are  alike  in  the  one  respect,  that  they 
have  been  deprived  of  the  power  so  to  diversify  the  employments 
of  their  members  as  to  develop  their  various  individualities,  and 
thus  fit  them  for  that  association  without  which  man  can  obtain 
no  power  to  command  the  services  of  nature.  Limited  entirely  to 
agriculture,  they  have  been  compelled  to  export  their  produce  in 
its  rudest  state — a  proceeding  involving  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil 
upon  which  they  are  dependent  for  support,  with  constant  diminu 
tion  in  the  return  to  human  effort.  Under  such  circumstances, 
commerce  would  necessarily  decline,  and  the  power  of  the  trader 
and  transporter  would  as  necessarily  increase ;  while  the  cultivator 
would  become  more  and  more  a  mere  instrument  to  be  used  by 
those  who  lived  by  the  exercise  of  their  powers  of  appropriation. 
That  he  does  so  in  all  these  countries  is  clear ;  and  that  such  are  the 
inevitable  consequences  of  a  policy  which  looks  to  the  prevention 
of  combination,  and  to  diminution  in  the  development  of  the  latent 
powers  of  man,  cannot  admit  of  a  moment's  doubt.  In  attribut 
ing  to  it,  then,  the  existing  state  of  things,  we  obtain  one  great 
and  uniform  cause  for  one  great  and  uniform  effect  —  a  policy 
tending  to  the  production  of  barbarism,  leading  to  famines  and 
pestilences,  ending  in  decay  and  death,  and  thus  giving  color  to 
the  theory  of  over-population. 

§  2.  That  man  may  acquire  power  over  nature,  it  is  indispen 
sable  that  the  market  for  his  labor,  and  for  his  products,  be  near 
at  hand.  When  it  is  distant,  however  perfect  may  be  the  means 
of  transportation,  the  manure  cannot  be  returned  to  the  land,  and 
unless  its  powers  are  maintained,  he  and  it  must  become  impove 
rished  together,  with  constant  diminution  in  the  power  of  main 
taining  commerce.  The  facilities  of  transportation  throughout 
Ireland  were  greatly  increased  in  the  half  century  that  has  just 


368  CHAPTER   XIV.    §  2. 

elapsed ;  but,  with  every  stage  of  that  improvement,  famines  and 
pestilences  increased  in  number  and  in  force,  until,  at  length,  the 
completion  of  an  extensive  system  of  railroads  was  signalized  by 
one  of  such  severity  as  entirely  to  have  distanced  all  that  had  pre 
ceded  it.  With  each  such  stage,  the  power  of  association  de 
clined —  the  soil  was  more  rapidly  impoverished  —  and  now  its 
laborers  are  everywhere  flying  from  the  homes  of  their  youth ;  its 
property-holders  are  everywhere  being  dispossessed  ;  and  its  men 
of  intellect  have  almost  entirely  disappeared. 

Railroads  are  now  being  made  for,  but  not  by,  the  people  of 
India,  but  their  effects  must,  inevitably,  be  the  same  with  those 
observed  in  Ireland.  The  object  for  the  attainment  of  which  they 
are  being  made,  is  the  further  promotion  of  the  export  of  the  raw 
produce  of  the  soil,  and  the  further  extension  of  the  centralizing 
power  of  trade ;  to  be  followed  by  increased  exhaustion  of  the 
land,  declining  power  of  association  among  its  occupants,  and 
more  rapid  decay  of  commerce.  The  little  that  yet  remains  of 
Indian  manufactures  must  speedily  disappear,  and  cotton  must 
more  and  more  be  required  to  find  its  way  from  its  producer  in 
the  heart  of  India,  to  his  immediate  neighbor  —  and  even  to  his 
own  wife  and  children — by  the  circuitous  route  of  Calcutta  or  Bom 
bay,  and  Manchester — a  proceeding  involving  the  use  of  bullocks, 
wagons,  ships,  and  railroad  cars,  with  constant  increase  in  the 
proportion  of  the  labor  of  the  community  required  for  effecting 
changes  of  place,  and  diminution  in  that  which  may  be  given  to 
increasing  the  quantity  susceptible  of  being  converted  or  ex 
changed.  The  more  railroads  made  in  India,  the  smaller  will  be 
the  demand  for  labor,  and  the  less  the  price  of  cotton  *  —  the 
greater  will  be  the  tendency  of  Indian  men  to  abandon  their  wives 
and  children,  and  fly  to  the  sugar  plantations  of  the  Mauritius 
in  search  of  food  —  the  greater  must  be  the  decline  in  the  power 
of  combination  —  and  the  less  the  tendency  to  the  development  of 
individuality  among  the  people. 

Mexico  has  declined  steadily  from  the  time  that  her  trade  be- 

*  Mr.  Chapman  furnishes  tables  showing  that  while  the  reduction  in  the 
cost  of  transporting  cotton  from  the  place  of  production  in  India  has  been 
but  seven  pence  per  pound,  the  reduction  in  England  has  been  ten  pence  — 
thus  showing  that  the  reward  of  land  and  labor  in  that  country  has  fallen 
considerably  with  the  substitution  of  trade  for  the  commerce  that  before  ex 
isted.  —  Cotton  and  Commerce  of  India,  p.  77. 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  369 

came  more  open  to  the  world.  Desiring  to  to  find  the  cause  of 
her  decay  and  approaching  dissolution,  we  must  seek  it  in  the 
fact,  that  her  manufactures  have  almost  altogether  disappeared, 
that  individuality  has  declined,  and  that  trade  has  superseded 
commerce.  Throughout  Spanish  America  generally,  the  same 
phenomena  have  been  presented — the  labor  required  for  transpor 
tation  steadily  augmenting,  and  that  given  to  production  dimi 
nishing  ;  with  constant  decline  in  the  power  of  the  soil  to  yield 
return  to  labor,  and  decline  in  the  power  of  man  to  subdue  to 
cultivation  the  richer  soils.  Italy,  Greece,  Africa,  Brazil,  and 
the  rich  islands  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  are  similarly  situated  — 
having  little  commerce  within  themselves,  and  being  compelled 
to  depend  almost  exclusively  on  trade  with  distant  countries.  The 
distresses  of  the  people  of  the  Ionian  islands  are  as  constant  in 
occurrence  as  are  the  famines  of  Madeira  ;  and  for  the  reason, 
that  while  compelled  to  depend  exclusively  on  agriculture,  there 
is,  necessarily,  an  unceasing  waste  of  capital. 

The  greater  the  power  for  good,  the  greater  is  that  for  evil. 
The  most  potent  poisons  are  the  most  active  remedies ;  and  the 
men  whose  powers  qualify  them  for  conferring  the  greatest  bene 
fits  on  mankind,  are  precisely  those  who,  when  viciously  disposed, 
are  most  injurious  to  society.  Steam  and  gunpowder,  properly 
directed,  are  of  inestimable  advantage  to  man ;  but  when  misdi 
rected,  their  power  for  mischief  is  in  the  ratio  of  their  capability 
of  rendering  service.  So  is  it  with  the  human  body  and  its  nou 
rishment —  the  food  that  is  capable  of  producing,  in  one  state  of 
the  system,  the  greatest  amount  of  force,  being  precisely  that 
which,  in  another  of  its  states,  most  tends  to  the  destruction  of 
force  and  the  annihilation  of  life.  So  is  it  with  roads  and  other 
improvements.  To  the  highly  organized  community — the  one  in 
which  diversity  of  employment  most  exists,  and  whose  commerce 
is,  therefore,  great  —  every  new  road  brings  with  it  increase  of 
power  over  nature,  with  increase  of  life  ;  whereas  to  the  one  of  low 
organization,  each  new  one  may  but  furnish  another  drain  through 
which  its  life's  blood  may  more  readily  be  carried  off — as  we  see 
to  have  been  the  case  with  Ireland.  Trade  has  been  "the  curse 
of  Polynesia  ;"  and  the  greater  that  now  becomes  its  power,  the 
more  rapid  is  the  progress  of  deterioration  among  the  people  of 
the  islands.  Trade  has  been  the  curse  of  Northern  and  Western 


370  CHAPTER   XIV.    §  2. 

Africa ;  and  the  Hottentots  are  disappearing  from  the  earth  as 
the  facilities  of  intercourse  with  foreigners  increase.  Trade 
sweeps  off  the  aborigines  of  the  West,  and  it  will  do  with  the  Ja 
panese,  when  once  it  shall  have  been  admitted,  precisely  what  it 
has  already  done  with  the  people  of  the  Sandwich  Islands  and  of 
India. 

That  such  should  be  the  case,  results  solely  from  the  fact  that 
communities  have  yet  to  learn  and  to  appreciate  the  advantage 
that  would  accrue  from  carrying  out,  in  their  relations  with  other 
and  weaker  societies,  the  great  law  which  prescribes  to  man  that 
he  shall  do  to  others  as  he  desires  that  they  shall  do  towards  him. 
In  affairs  of  state,  morality  is  unknown ;  and,  as  a  necessary 
consequence,  the  great  and  permanent  good  is  constantly  sacri 
ficed  to  the  trivial  and  temporary  profit  —  nations  everywhere 
being  governed  in  their  conduct  towards  each  other  by  motives 
precisely  similar  to  those  which  so  often  prompt  the  individual  to 
earn  a  place  in  the  penitentiary  by  picking  his  neighbor's  pocket, 
when  by  a  different  course  of  conduct  he  might  readily  place  him 
self  in  a  situation  of  permanent  ease  and  comfort.* 

Had  the  people  of  Africa  been  instructed  in  the  ways  of  real 
civilization  —  had  they  been  taught,  in  pursuance  of  the  advice  of 
Adam  Smith,  to  combine  their  raw  materials  together,  and  thus 
fit  them  for  distant  transportation  —  they  might  now  have  roads, 
and  might  now  be  prepared  to  supply  to  Europe,  to  an  almost 
unlimited  extent,  the  productions  of  the  tropics ;  while  they,  them 
selves,  would  be  rapidly  advancing  in  the  development  of  their 
various  faculties.  Had  the  Irish  people,  and  those  of  Turkey, 
and  of  Portugal,  been  permitted  to  acquire,  and  to  extend,  the  arts 
of  manufacture,  they  would  now  be  adding  largely  to  the  stock  of 
raw  materials  for  the  world,  and  the  commerce  with  them  would 
be  of  high  importance.  That  it  has  become  entirely  valueless, 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  they  have  been  compelled  to  have  free 
intercourse  with  communities  in  a  higher  state  of  organization 
than  themselves  —  potent  for  good  or  evil,  and  using  their  power 
as  a  means  of  securing  advantage  for  themselves.  Seeking  always 

*  "When  we  pass  from  internal  to  international  concerns,  we  seek  in  vain 
for  a  virtuous  nation.  Each  community,  as  it  in  turn  rises  to  power,  dis 
dains  all  law  of  right,  and  submits  only  to  that  law  of  force  which  it  every 
where  seeks  to  impose.  Hence  the  history  of  the  world  is  stained  with  every 
crime  that  makes  man  odious." —  Westminster  Review,  January,  1851. 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  371 

the  present  and  temporary  good,  while  careless  in  regard  to  the 
future  and  lasting  injury,  the  latter  have  sought  to  strengthen 
themselves  by  weakening  all  around  them  —  the  doing  of  which 
intentionally  would  be  a  crime  ;  but,  as  a  result  of  want  of  know 
ledge  of  the  true  principles  of  social  science,  it  has  been  "  a  blun 
der;"  and  would  therefore,  in  the  judgment  of  Talleyrand,  be 
regarded  as  "even  worse  than  a  crime." 

§  3.  An  enlightened  self-interest  teaches  all  men  that  they  pro 
fit  by  the  improvement  of  their  neighbors  —  and  to  such  extent  is 
this  the  case,  that  we  see  throughout  a  large  portion  of  this  coun 
try  the  rich  gladly,  and  largely,  contributing  to  the  education  of 
their  poorer  neighbors — and  feeling  themselves  abundantly  repaid 
therefor  by  the  increased  security  thereby  obtained  for  the  enjoy 
ment  of  their  own  rights  of  person  and  of  property.  Where  there 
exists  that  feeling,  the  closer  the  connection  between  those  who 
are  strong  of  mind,  or  of  body,  and  those  who  are  weak  in  either, 
the  better  is  it  for  all ;  but  where  the  feeling  is  the  reverse  of  this 
— where  each  man  seeks  to  make  of  his  fellow-man  his  prey  —  the 
less  the  intercourse,  the  better  it  must  be  for  all.  This  last  is  the 
state  of  things  existing  in  the  early  stages  of  society,  when  the 
soldier  and  the  trader  are  the  masters  of  those  by  whom  they  are 
surrounded ;  whereas,  the  former  is  that  which  tends  to  arise  as 
the  powers  of  the  earth  become  more  and  more  developed  —  as 
wealth  increases  —  as  men  are  more  enabled  to  live  in  connection 
with  each  other — as  commerce  grows — and  as  society  tends  more 
and  more  to  assume  its  highest  form. 

In  the  first  of  these  conditions  —  society  being  in  a  state  of  low 
development  —  the  resistance  to  gravitation  is  very  small  indeed. 
In  the  last  —  being  that  in  which  the  various  faculties  of  man  are 
well  developed — the  attractive  force  is  great.  In  the  first,  there 
is  little  power  for  good  or  evil.  In  the  last,  there  is  much 
for  either,  or  for  both;  and  whether  its  existence  shall  be  a 
blessing,  or  a  curse,  to  mankind  at  large,  is  as  much  dependent 
upon  the  manner  in  which  its  societary  force  is  directed,  as  is  the 
case  with  steam,  at  one  time  used  for  facilitating  the  acquisition 
of  food  and  clothing,  and  at  another  devoted  to  the  battering  of 
city  walls,  and  to  the  destruction  of  human  life. 

Between  two  communities  differing  in  the  manner  above  de- 


372  CHAPTER   XIV.    §  3. 

scribed,  an  enlightened  self-interest  would  induce  the  stronger  to 
protect  and  strengthen  the  weaker  —  to  facilitate  the  division  of 
employments  and  the  development  of  individuality  —  to  increase 
the  power  of  association,  with  a  view  to  enable  its  neighbor  to 
obtain  control  over  the  forces  of  nature  —  and  thus  to  aid  the 
growth  of  freedom  and  of  commerce.  Such,  however,  is  not,  nor 
has  ever  been,  the  policy  of  nations  ;  and  the  reason  why  it  has 
not  been  so  is,  that  they  have,  to  so  great  an  extent,  been  mere 
instruments  in  the  hands  of  the  class  that  lives  by  appropriation 
—  the  soldier,  the  slave-owner,  the  trader,  and  the  politician. 
To  this  it  is  due  that,  even  in  the  case  of  these  United  States, 
there  has  been  so  great  a  disposition  to  plunder  and  oppress 
their  weaker  neighbors  —  the  Mexican  Republic,  and  the  poor 
remains  of  the  native  tribes.  Even  now,  instead  of  rendering  to 
the  former  the  friendly  counsel,  or  the  aid,  by  help  of  which  she 
might,  perhaps,  emerge  from  her  present  depressed  condition,  the 
American  people,  and  their  government,  are  waiting  anxiously 
for  the  moment  when  it  may  become  possible  to  make  new  trea 
ties  by  means  of  which  they  may  facilitate  the  resolution  of  Mexi 
can  society  into  its  original  elements,  and  thus  enable  themselves 
to  acquire  additional  territory.  Animated  by  the  trading  spirit, 
they  seek  to  make  good  bargains,  careless  of  their  effect  on  the 
people  with  whom  they  are  made.  Hence  it  is  that  trade  now 
grows  as  commerce  declines: — that  cities  increase  in  size  as  towns 
and  villages  become  less  populous — that  property  in  land  in  the 
older  States  is  becoming  less  and  less  divided — that  political  and 
trading  centralization  is  rapidly  superseding  the  local  activity  that 
once  prevailed  —  that  the  slavery  of  man  is  now  being  viewed  as 
but  a  consequence  of  great  natural  laws  instituted  by  the  Creator 
of  all  mankind  —  and  that  distrust  has  now  so  entirely  replaced 
the  confidence  once  felt  by  all  the  people  of  this  continent,  in  the 
honor  and  honesty  of  the  American  government. 

By  no  people  of  the  world,  however,  has  this  course  been  so 
uniformly  pursued,  as  by  that  of  England  —  the  only  one  whose 
policy  has  looked  wholly  to  the  advancement  of  the  trader's  inte 
rests  ;  and  the  only  one,  too,  that  now  recognises,  as  its  cardinal 
principle,  the  trader's  motto,  "Buy  in  the  cheapest  market,  and 
sell  in  the  dearest  one."  By  none  has  trade  been  so  systematic 
ally  pursued.  By  none  has  commerce  been  so  much  oppressed  ; 


OF   CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN   PLACE.  373 

and  by  none  has  the  power  for  oppression  been  so  great.  Prohi 
biting  association  where  it  did  not  as  yet  exist,  and  annihilating 
it  where  it  did,  the  results  are  seen  in  the  reduction  to  a  dead 
level  of  mere  tillers  of  the  earth,  of  the  people  of  all  the  commu 
nities  subjected  to  its  system  ;  and  in  the  decline  and  ruin  of  the 
communities  themselves,  as  exhibited  in  the  several  cases  above 
referred  to.  In  all  of  them  there  is  a  yearly  diminution  of 
those  differences  of  society  required  for  the  development  of  indi 
vidual  faculty,  and  for  the  perfection  of  organization.  In  all, 
society  becomes  from  year  to  year  more  imperfect,  and  more  obe 
dient  to  the  force  of  gravitation.*  In  all,  there  is  a  yearly  increase 
of  centralization  ;  and  centralization,  slavery,  and  death  go  always 
hand  in  hand  with  one  another.  In  all,  the  difficulty  of  obtaining 
food  is  a  steadily  increasing  one ;  and  in  all,  therefore,  counte 
nance  is  afforded  to  the  idea  that  population  tends  to  increase 
faster  than  the  food  required  for  man's  support.  Such,  however, 
are  but  the  consequences  that,  in  the  existing  state  of  national 
immorality,  must  everywhere  result  from  perfect  freedom  of  inter 
course  between  a  strong  and  well-developed  community  on  one 
side,  and  a  weak  and  imperfect  one  on  the  other. f 

*  "The  more  imperfect  a  body,  the  more,"  says  Goethe,  "do  the  parts 
resemble  the  whole."  In  a  purely  agricultural  community,  all  the  parts  are 
precisely  similar,  and  the  whole  is  but  as  one  of  the  parts  magnified. 

|  The  author  of  the  following  passages,  although  differing  greatly  from 
the  writer  of  this  work  in  relation  to  highly  important  questions,  has  found 
himself  forced,  by  an  observation  of  facts  occurring  in  our  Southern  States, 
into  an  agreement  with  the  ideas  above  expressed : — 

"  Under  the  system  of  free  trade,  a  fertile  soil,  with  good  rivers  and  roads 
as  outlets,  becomes  the  greatest  evil  with  which  a  country  can  be  afflicted. 
The  richness  of  soil  invites  to  agriculture,  and  the  roads  and  rivers  carry  off 
the  crops,  to  be  exchanged  for  the  manufactures  of  poorer  regions,  where 
are  situated  the  centres  of  trade,  of  capital,  and  manufactures.  In  a  few 
centui'ies,  or  less  time,  the  consumption  abroad  of  the  crops  impoverishes 
the  soil  where  they  are  made.  No  cities  or  manufactories  arise  in  the  coun 
try  with  this  fertile  soil,  because  there  is  no  occasion.  No  pursuits  are  car 
ried  on  requiring  intelligence  or  skill ;  the  population  is  of  necessity  sparse, 
ignorant,  and  illiterate;  universal  absenteeism  prevails;  the  rich  go  off  for 
pleasure  and  education  —  the  enterprising  poor  for  employment.  An  intelli 
gent  friend  suggests  that,  left  to  nature,  the  evil  will  cure  itself.  So  it  may 
when  the  country  is  ruined,  if  the  people,  like  those  of  Georgia,  are  of  high 
character,  and  betake  themselves  to  other  pursuits  than  mere  agi'iculture, 
and  totally  repudiate  free-trade  doctrines.  Our  friends'  objection  only 
proves  the  truth  of  our  theory.  We  are  very  sure  that  the  wit  of  man  can 
devise  no  means  so  effectual  to  impoverish  a  country  as  exclusive  agricul 
ture.  The  ravages  of  war,  pestilence,  and  famine  are  soon  effaced ;  centu 
ries  are  required  to  restore  an  exhausted  soil.  The  more  rapidly  money  is 
made  in  such  a  country,  enjoying  free  trade,  the  faster  it  is  impoverished, 
for  the  draft  on  the  soil  is  greater,  and  those  who  make  good  crops  spend 


3*74  CHAPTER   XIV.    §4. 

§  4.  The  steam-engine  digests  fuel,  and  power  is  produced. 
Man  digests  fuel  in  the  form  of  food,  by  help  of  which  he  obtains 
power  to  labor  with  his  body,  or  his  mind,  or  with  both  together. 
Alike  in  the  fact  that  both  thus  digest  capital  in  one  form,  and 
reproduce  it  in  another,  they  differ  in  the  one  important  respect, 
that  while  the  iron  locomotive  can  exist  without  food,  the  other 
cannot.  The  railroad  manager  carefully  avoids  the  consumption 
of  fuel  when  he  does  not  need  the  services  of  the  engine,  knowing 
that  such  a  proceeding  would  be  waste  of  capital.  The  manager 
of  the  human  locomotive  must  burn  the  fuel  even  when  there  is 
no  demand  for  power ;  and  therefore  is  it  that  in  countries  in 
which  the  diversity  of  employments  declines,  and  in  which,  conse 
quently,  commerce  diminishes,  the  quantity  of  capital  consumed 
so  largely  exceeds  that  which  is  reproduced,  as  to  cause  wealth 
to  disappear,  and  man  to  return  to  his  original  position — that  of 
the  slave  of  nature.  Muscular  force  and  mental  energy  there  go 
to  waste,  while  the  powers  of  the  soil  decline  from  year  to  year, 
because  of  the  unceasing  withdrawal  of  the  constituent  elements 
of  food  and  clothing — a  course  of  proceeding  to  which  nature  has 
affixed  the  penalties  of  poverty,  famine,  disease,  and  death. 

It  may,  perhaps,  be  said  that  the  people  of  all  the  countries  we 
have  named  are  uncivilized  —  that  they  dislike  change,  even  when 
it  is  improvement — that  they  would  continue  to  use  their  wretched 
substitutes  for  ploughs,  hoes,  and  steam-engines,  even  were  the  latter 
offered  to  them  ;  but  this  state  of  things  results,  necessarily,  from 
the  absence  of  power  to  maintain  for  themselves  local  centres  of 
action,  furnishing  the  attractive  force  required  for  resisting  cen 
tral  attraction  so  great  as  that  which  exists  in  the  British  islands. 
Local  attraction  is  as  necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  communities 
in  the  presence  of  each  other,  as  is  local  gravitation  in  the  planets 
in  the  presence  of  the  sun.  Under  the  centralizing  influence  of 

them  abroad — those  who  make  small  ones,  at  home.  In  the  absence  of  free 
trade,  this  rich  region  must  manufacture  for  itself,  build  cities,  erect  schools 
and  colleges,  and  carry  on  all  the  pursuits  and  provide  for  all  the  common 
wants  of  civilized  man.  Thus  the  money  made  at  home  would  be  spent  and 
invested  at  home ;  the  crops  would  be  consumed  at  home,  and  each  town 
and  village  would  furnish  manure  to  fertilize  the  soil  around  it.  We  believe 
it  is  a  common  theory  that,  without  this  domestic  consumption,  no  soil  can 
be  kept  permanently  rich.  A  dense  population  would  arise,  because  it  would 
be  required  ;  the  rich  would  have  no  further  occasion  to  leave  home  for  plea 
sure,  nor  the  poor  for  employment."  —  FITZHUGH:  Sociology  for  the  South, 
pp.  14-16. 


OF  CHANGES  OF  MATTER  IN  PLACE.  375 

Great  Britain,  the  societies  of  India,  of  Ireland,  of  Portugal,  and 
of  Turkey  have  become  so  entirely  decomposed,  that  they  are  now 
little  better  than  masses  of  ruins  ;  and  as  such  must  they  conti 
nue  unless  there  be  a  change  of  system.  Such  having  been  the 
case  with  old  and  established  societies,  how  impossible  must  it 
have  been  to  establish  in  Jamaica  any  system  of  counter-attrac 
tion,  even  had  there  existed  none  of  the  prohibitions  of  manufac 
ture  to  which  the  reader's  attention  has  above  been  called  !  It  is 
the  first  step  in  the  way  of  improvement  that  is  always  the  most 
difficult  and  the  least  productive  —  but  no  such  step  is  possible 
in  presence  of  a  system  that  prohibits  association,  and  that  is 
armed  with  power  to  give  the  prohibition  full  effect.  There  lies 
the  difficulty,  and  not  in  the  character  of  the  people.  Out  of  Ire 
land,  Irishmen  have,  at  all  times,  and  everywhere,  manifested  the 
possession  of  all  the  qualities  required  for  the  production  of  one 
of  the  most  distinguished  nations  of  the  world.  The  Portuguese 
of  the  present  day  have  all  the  faculties  of  their  predecessors,  but 
they  remain  latent,  waiting  to  be  stimulated  into  activity ;  and 
that  they  will  be,  whenever  the  power  of  association  and  combi 
nation  shall  be  obtained.  The  powers  of  the  Hindoo  are  as  great 
now  as  they  were  when  Europe  was  indebted  to  India  for  all  the 
fine  commodities  she  used  ;  and  as  regards  his  moral  qualities,  all 
unite  in  giving  him  the  highest  character.*  The  people  of  Tur 
key  maintained  a  great  commerce  among  themselves,  two  centu 
ries  since  ;  and  they  could  now  do  more,  had  they  the  same  faci 
lities  therefor  their  predecessors  then  possessed.  So,  too,  with 
those  of  Jamaica,  to  whom  a  nominal  freedom  has  been  given, 
but  under  circumstances  that  cause  a  constant  destruction  of  capi 
tal,  and  as  constant  a  diminution  in  the  power  to  maintain  com 
merce. 

Commerce  economizes  the  power  resulting  from  the  consump 
tion  of  food  and  clothing,  and  therefore  it  is  that  capital  so 

*  "  I  do  not  exactly  know  what  is  meant  by  civilizing  the  people  of  India. 
In  the  theory  and  practice  of  good  government  they  may  be  deficient;  but 
if  a  good  system  of  agriculture — if  unrivalled  manufactures — if  a  capacity  to 
produce  what  convenience  or  luxury  demands  —  if  the  establishment  of 
schools  for  reading  and  writing  —  if  the  general  practice  of  kindness  and 
hospitality — and,  above  all,  if  a  scrupulous  respect  and  delicacy  towards  the 
female  sex,  are  among  the  points  that  denote  a  civilized  people,  then  the 
Hindoos  are  not  inferior  in  civilization  to  the  people  of  Europe."  —  Sir  Tho 
mas  Munro. 


376  CHAPTER   XIV.    §  5. 

rapidly  accumulates  where  the  power  of  association  and  combina 
tion  rapidly  grows  —  with  steady  tendency  to  increase  in  the 
ability  to  repay  the  debt  contracted  to  our  great  mother  earth. 
Commerce  declines  with  every  increase  in  the  necessity  for  the 
services  of  the  trader ;  and  does  so  because  every  step  in  that 
direction  is  attended  with  increase  in  the  waste  of  that  physical 
and  mental  power  in  which  consists  the  most  important  portion  of 
the  real  capital  of  a  country  —  the  representative  of  that  which, 
in  the  form  of  food,  is  from  day  to  day  consumed.  At  twenty- 
five  cents  a  head,  the  daily  capital  consumed  in  this  country  is 
nearly  seven  millions  of  dollars,  and  little  short  of  fifty  millions  a 
week,  or  two  thousand  six  hundred  millions  a  year.  The  enforced 
loss  here,  of  even  a  single  hour  per  day,  being  equal  to  an  annual 
one  of  more  than  two  hundred  millions,  howeuormous  must  be  that 
of  communities  situated  as  are  Ireland  and  India,  where  not  even 
a  tenth  of  the  power  of  physical  and  mental  effort  is  put  to  use  ! 
Add  to  this,  the  waste  resulting  from  the  constant  exhaustion  of 
the  soil,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  the  injury  to  the  former  alone, 
from  her  limitation  to  the  single  pursuit  of  agriculture,  is  more 
than  would  be  paid  for,  thrice  over,  by  the  free  gift  of  the  exports 
from  England  to  all  the  world. 

Annihilate  in  England  herself  those  differences  which  at  once 
qualify  for,  and  lead  to,  association  and  combination,  and  her 
people  would  sink  to  the  condition  of  the  serfs  of  the  days  of  the 
Plantagenets ;  and  such,  t6o,  would  be  the  case  with  those  of 
all  the  other  countries  of  Europe.  Association  is  the  condition 
of  existence  of  MAN  —  of  the  being  made  in  the  likeness  of  his 
Creator.  By  means  of  it,  and  it  alone,  he  obtains  power  to 
command  the  great  forces  of  nature.  When  that  is  denied  to  him, 
he  sinks  to  the  condition  of  slave  to  her  and  to  his  fellow-man  — 
and  then  it  is,  that  population  becomes  superabundant. 

§  5.  Every  diminution  of  commerce,  and  increase  in  the  neces 
sity  for  the  use  of  machinery  of  transportation,  is  attended  with 
increase  in  the  power  of  the  few  who  live  by  trade,  or  by  war,  to 
tax  the  many  for  the  accomplishment  of  their  purposes ;  and  with 
a  diminution  in  the  power  of  the  latter  to  protect  themselves 
from  such  taxation.  The  larger  the  surplus  requiring  to  be 
transported;  the  greater  become  the  facilities  for  combination  for 


OF    CHANGES   OF   MATTER   IN    PLACE.  377 

reduction  of  prices,  and  increase  of  freight  and  charges ;  and  con 
sequent  increase  of  the  trader's  profits — with  large  increase  in  his 
proportion  of  the  total  products.  The  less  the  commerce,  and 
the  less  the  demand  for  labor,  the  greater  is  the  facility  with 
which  armies  may  be  recruited,  to  the  profit  of  the  man  who  lives 
by  plundering  his  neighbor.  In  no  country  of  the  world  has 
commerce  more  declined  than  it  has  done  in  India ;  and  there  it 
is  that  we  witness  a  constant  series  of  wars  for  the  extension  of 
trade  * — the  bill  of  costs  for  which  is  not  presented  to  the  people 
of  England,  for  whose  purposes  they  are  made,  but,  as  Mr.  Cob- 
den  most  truly  says,  "to  the  unhappy  ryots  of  Hindostan ; " f 
and  when  the  new  territories  prove  unprofitable,  the  poor  laborer 
is  further  taxed  for  the  maintenance  of  government  in  the  posses 
sions  thus  acquired. 

The  people,  white  and  black,  of  Jamaica,  had  no  interest  in 
the  wars  of  the  French  Revolution ;  and  yet  more  than  half  of  the 
price  paid  for  their  sugar  by  their  English  fellow -subjects  was 
taken  for  the  payment  of  its  expenses.  So,  too,  with  Ireland, 
taxed  to  the  uttermost  for  the  maintenance  of  wars  from  which 
she  had  nothing  to  gain,  and  whose  chief  effect  was  that  of  con 
verting  into  soldiers,  at  sixpence  a  day,  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
men,  who,  under  a  different  system,  would  have  become  excellent 
artisans,  or  agriculturists.  Every  increase  in  the  necessity  for 
transportation  being  exhaustive,  the  supremacy  of  trade  is  seen 
everywhere  to  be  attended  by  desire  for  war  as  a  means  of  extend 
ing  the  fields  in  which  to  operate.  Like  Alexander,  it  sighs  for 
worlds  to  conquer ;  and  this  it  does,  because  of  the  unceasing 
failure  of  the  conquests  already  made  to  realize  the  anticipations 
that  had  been  formed.  J 

*  "Out  of  the  nineteen  years  of  the  present,  charter,  fifteen  have  been 
passed  in  war."  —  London  Daily  News. 

f  How  Wars  are  got  up  in  India,  p.  5G. 

•j-  ..  Trade  is  not  absolutely  powerful  to  support  and  extend  itself,  without 
it  be  pioneered  and  protected  by  other  influences.  If  we  had  not  been 
blinded  by  certain  dominant  economical  dogmas,  we  might  have  learned 
that  in  other  quarters  of  the  globe."  "Wo  have  taken 

these  instances  at  random  ;  we  might  extend  the  list ;  but  we  have  already 
sufficient  to  prove  that  (he  sivord  may  carve  out  the  path  for  commerce,  that 
diplomacy  may  accomplish  alliances  and  open  territories,  and  that  personal 
influence,  such  as  that  of  an  Ashburton  or  a  Dunham,  may  bring  large 
classes,  or  great  continents,  within  the  commercial  league  of  free  trade. 
It  was  boasted,  not  long  since,  that  trade  could  act  by  itself;  that  it  could 
excavate  its  own  tunnels,  purchase  its  own  protection,  and  open  its  own  ter- 

YOL.  I.—25 


378  CHAPTER    XIV.    §  5. 

That  this  must  ever  be  the  case,  and  that  such  discord  is  a 
necessary  consequence  of  a  system  looking  to  exaggeration  of  the 
difficulties  attendant  upon  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of 
place,  will  be  obvious  to  the  reader  on  consideration  of  the  fol 
lowing  facts  : —  Ships  are  to  be  regarded  but  as  floating  bridges, 
and  when  we  arrange  them  end  to  end,  we  are  enabled  to  deter 
mine  the  extent  of  their  capabilities  for  occupying  the  place  of 
commerce,  as  they  have  been  made  to  do,  in  all  the  operations  of 
the  hundreds  of  millions  of  whom  the  populations  of  Ireland, 
India,  Turkey,  and  Portugal  are  composed.  A  foot  in  length, 
of  a  ship,  being  about  the  equivalent  of  ten  tons,  to  bridge  the 
Atlantic  with  ships,  so  as  to  make  a  road  thirty  feet  in  width, 
would  require  more  than  sixty  millions  of  tons ;  but  to  make  such 
a  bridge  connecting  India,  Australia,  and  America  with  England, 
would  require  some  hundreds  of  millions ;  and  as  the  total  ocean 
tonnage  of  the  world  does  not  exceed  five  millions,  it  follows  that 
all  the  shipping  now  in  existence  does  not  afford  means  of  com 
munication  with  the  single  market  at  which  raw  materials  are  to 
be  converted  into  cloth  and  iron,  equal  to  a  road  an  inch  in 
breadth.  It  is,  nevertheless,  by  means  of  such  a  narrow  strait 
as  this,  thirty  thousand  miles  in  length,  that  the  Hindoo  who 
produces  cotton  maintains  commerce  with  his  next-door  neigh 
bor,  who  requires  to  consume  cloth.  By  means  of  such  a  strait 
as  this,  many  thousand  miles  in  length,  the  people  of  Portugal 
and  Turkey  maintain  commerce  among  themselves,  and  with  the 
world  at  large ;  and  it  is  through  such  an  one  that  the  people  of 
Jamaica  at  this  moment  make  every  exchange  of  service  with  each 
other  —  as  a  consequence  of  which  there  is  no  circulation  of  men 
or  things,  nor  is  there  any  value  in  their  labor  or  in  their  land. 

Being  limited  to  the  use  of  a  passage  so  narrow  as  this,  it  fol 
lows,  necessarily,  that  when  nature  is  most  bounteous  —  when  she 
showers  her  benefits  upon  the  heads  of  the  people  who  raise  rice, 
wheat,  cotton,  or  wool  —  the  markets  become  glutted  with  pro 
duce,  to  the  ruin  of  the  producers  —  but  enabling  the  transporter 
to  rejoice  over  his  rapid  accumulations.  Further,  the  very  fact 

ritories;  but^ere  we  find  that  commerce  waits  upon  the  achievements  of  the  sword, 
and  the  negotiations  of  diplomacy."  —  Spectator,  September  4,  1854. 

Views  similar  to  these  are  contained  in  all  the  recent.  English  journals  — 
all  of  which  find  compensation  for  the  extraordinary  waste  of  life  and  trea 
sure  in  the  Crimea,  in  the  probable  future  increase  of  trade. 


OF    CHANGES   OF    MATTER   IN   PLACE. 

that  his  profits  are  so  large  tends  to  render  the  glut  yet  more 
complete ;  and  for  the  reason,  that  the  larger  his  proportion  of 
the  cargo,  the  smaller  is  that  of  the  producer,  and  the  less  the 
ability  of  the  latter  to  make  purchases  in  the  great  central  mar 
ket,  and  thus  to  help  to  make  demand  for  the  raw  materials  that 
he  himself  has  furnished.  Hence  results  the  remarkable  fact  that 
it  is  precisely  when  cotton  cloth  is  cheapest  that  the  planter  can 
least  afford  to  purchase  it — and  that  when  refined  sugar  is  cheap 
est  the  sugar-planter  can  least  afford  to  consume  it. 

The  greater  the  time  required  to  elapse,  and  the  greater  the 
space  required  to  be  travelled  over,  between  production  and  con 
sumption,  the  greater  must  be  the  friction,  the  less  the  motion  of 
society,  and  the  less  its  force — but  the  greater  will  be  the  powers 
of  the  trader,  transporter,  and  money-lender — the  larger  the  pro 
portion  of  the  product  that  enures  to  them  —  and  the  greater  the 
tendency  towards  the  production  of  the  disease  of  over-popula 
tion,  with  its  accompaniments,  famine,  disease,  and  death. 

§  6.  The  more  rapid  the  circulation,  the  greater  must  be  the 
economy  of  human  power,  and  the  greater  the  force  of  the  com 
munity  itself.  The  less  the  rapidity,  the  greater  must  be  the  waste 
of  power,  and  the  less  the  force.  To  have  motion  in  society, 
there  must  be  diversification  in  the  demands  for  the  various  facul 
ties  of  man.  No  such  demand  existing  in  any  of  the  countries 
that  have  above  been  named,  there  is  in  all  of  them  a  constant- 
waste  of  the  capital  produced  in  the  form  of  mental  or  physical 
capacity  for  exertion,  yielded  in  return  to  the  capital  consumed 
in  the  form  of  food. 

In  India,  nine-tenths  are  wasted,  while,  of  the  trivial  product 
of  the  remainder,  a  large  portion  is  claimed  by  those  who  exer 
cise  the  powers  of  government.  The  balance  is  subjected  to  the 
exhaustive  process  above  described,  by  help  of  which  the  cotton 
that  has  yielded  its  producer  but  a  penny  returns  to  him  at  a  cost 
of  twelve,  fifteen,  or  twenty  pence.  So  is  it  in  Ireland  ;  and  so, 
too,  is  it  in  Jamaica,  Portugal,  and  Turkey  —  in  all  of  which  the 
men  engaged  in  effecting  those  mechanical  and  chemical  changes 
in  tli e  forms  of  matter — commonly  designated  by  the  term  manu 
factures —  become  from  year  to  year  more  widely  separated  from 
those  engaged  in  the  work  of  cultivation. 


380  CHAPTER   XIV.    §  6- 

In  all  of  them,  consequently,  there  is  a  constantly  increasing 
necessity  for  transportation.  In  all  of  them,  the  utility  of  the 
rude  products  of  the  earth  steadily  diminishes,  and  the  power  of 
the  earth  to  yield  them  steadily  declines,  as  the  soil  becomes 
exhausted.  In  all,  there  is  an  increase  in  the  value  of  commodi 
ties  required  for  the  use  of  man,  and  a  decline  in  the  value  of  man 
himself.  In  all,  the  accumulations  of  the  past  acquire  increased 
control  over  the  labors  of  the  present.  In  all,  commerce  dimi 
nishes  as  trade  acquires  increase  of  power.  With  all,  the  value  of 
English  trade  declines  —  thus  proving,  to  use  the  words  of  Colo 
nel  Sleeman,  "the  folly  of  conquerors  and  paramount  powers, 
from  the  days  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  down  to  those  of  Lord 
Hastings  and  Sir  John  Malcolm,  who  were  all  bad  political  eco 
nomists,  in  supposing  that  conquered  and  ceded  territories  could 
always  be  made  to  yield  to  a  foreign  state  the  same  amount  of 
gross  revenue  they  had  paid  to  their  domestic  government,  what 
ever  their  situation  with  reference  to  markets  for  their  produce  — 
whatever  the  state  of  their  arts  and  industry  —  and  whatever  the 
character  and  extent  of  the  local  establishments  maintained  out  of 
it."  *  With  all  the  dependencies  of  England  —  even  where  nomi 
nally  free  —  her  course  is  an  exhaustive  one  ;  and  yet  her  people 
become  daily  more  and  more  themselves  dependent  on  those  dis 
tant  markets  for  the  supplies  required  for  the  support  of  life. 
How  far  it  is  to  this  increased  dependence  that  we  owe  the  exist 
ence  of  the  facts  of  English  history  upon  which  were  founded  the 
theory  of  over-population,  will  be  examined  in  another  chapter. 
Should  they  prove  to  have  been  due  exclusively  to  the  one  great 
error  of  English  policy,  then  will  that  examination  furnish  evi 
dence  that  it  is  not  only  right,  but  profitable,  for  communities  to 
carry  into  their  relations  with  each  other  the  strict  observance 
of  that  great  law  which  requires  of  man  that  he  shall  do  by  others 
as  he  desires  that  they  shall  do  by  him. 

*  See  ante,  p.  345. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF    FORM.        381 


CHAPTER   XY. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   IN   THE   FORM 
OF    MATTER. 

§  1.  To  transport  the  sticks  of  wood  by  means  of  which  our 
colonist  might,  in  some  degree,  shelter  himself  from  the  wind  and 
the  rain,  required  the  exertion  of  brute  force  alone ;  but  before 
he  could  succeed  in  converting  any  of  them  into  a  bow,  it  was 
requisite  that  he  should  make  himself  acquainted  with  those  pro 
perties  of  matter  known  as  elasticity  and  tenacity.  For  the  effec 
tuation  of  changes  of  form  there  was  needed,  therefore,  a  know 
ledge  of  the  qualities  of  the  things  that  were  to  be  converted ; 
whereas,  for  effecting  changes  of  place,  he  needed  only  to  know 
their  number,  magnitude,  or  weight ;  and,  as  a  necessary  conse 
quence,  the  work  of  conversion,  more  concrete  and  special,  fol 
lowed,  in  the  order  of  development,  the  more  abstract  one  of 
transportation. 

Few  things  are  yielded  by  the  earth  in  the  precise  form  in  which 
they  are  required  for  serving  the  purposes  of  man.  He  may  eat 
apples,  oranges,  dates,  or  figs,  as  they  come  from  the  tree ;  but 
the  potato  requires  to  be  cooked,  the  grain  to  be  crushed,  and 
the  flour  to  be  baked,  before  they  can  be  made  available  for  his 
nourishment.  He  may  wrap  the  skin  around  his  shoulders ;  but 
before  he  can  convert  the  wool  into  a  garment  fitted  to  preserve 
him  from  the  winter's  cold,  he  must  make  himself  familiar  with 
the  properties  by  which  it  is  distinguished.  The  foliage  may  at 
times  shield  him  from  the  sun,  but  to  enable  him  to  obtain  proper 
shelter  from  the  weather,  he  must  learn  to  fell  the  tree  and  con 
vert  it  into  logs,  or  planks.  To  do  these  things  requires  know 
ledge,  with  every  step  in  the  acquisition  of  which,  he  obtains 
increased  control  over  the  natural  forces  provided  for  his  use  — 
while  with  each,  is  more  and  more  developed  the  utility  of  the 


382  CHAPTER   XV.    §1. 

corn,  the  wool,  and  the  timber,  with  constant  decline  in  the  value 
of  the  food,  the  clothing,  and  the  shelter  he  requires — and  as  con 
stant  increase  of  wealth. 

Of  all  the  beautiful  and  wonderful  provisions  of  nature,  there  is 
probably  none  more  beautiful  than  that  which  may  be  here  ob 
served.  The  necessity  for  changing  the  form  of  animal  and  vege 
table  products  before  they  can  become  fitted  for  man's  consump 
tion,  constitutes  an  obstacle  requiring  to  be  surmounted ;  and  one 
that  does  not  exist  in  relation  to  birds,  beasts,  or  fishes,  to  all  of 
which  food  is  furnished  in  the  precise  form  in  which  it  is  required. 
So,  too,  with  clothing,  all  of  which  is  supplied  to  other  animals 
by  nature ;  whereas,  man  is  obliged  to  change  the  form  of  the 
flax,  the  silk,  and  the  wool,  before  they  can  be  made  to  serve  his 
purposes ;  and  here  it  is  that  we  find  the  great  stimulus  to  activity 
of  mind  —  leading  to  the  development  of  individuality,  and  fitting 
him  for  association  with  his  fellow-men.  Had  food  and  clothing 
been  supplied  to  him  in  abundance,  and  in  the  form  in  which  they 
were  required,  his  faculties  would  everywhere  have  remained  as 
inert  and  useless  as  are  now  those  of  the  people  of  tropical  coun 
tries,  whole  families  of  whom  are  supplied  with  the  former  by  a 
single  breadfruit-tree ;  while  the  latter  is  superseded  by  a  con 
stant  summer's  sun.  Nature  giving  these  unasked,  there  exists 
but  little  inducement  for  the  exercise  of  those  faculties  by  which 
man  is  distinguished  from  the  brute,  which  remain,  therefore, 
undeveloped ;  and,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  the  power  and 
the  habit  of  association  are  there  found  least  developed.  Man 
was  placed  here  to  obtain  command  over  nature ;  and,  to  that 
end,  he  was  endowed  with  faculties  capable  of  action,  but  re 
quiring  to  be  stimulate  1  into  activity  by  the  necessity  for  over 
coming  the  forces  by  which  he  is  surrounded  —  forces,  whose 
powers  of  resistance  are  always  in  the  direct  ratio  of  their 
capability  of  aiding  him  in  his  further  efforts,  whenever  they  have 
been  brought  entirely  under  his  control.  The  rich  soils  of  the 
earth  are  capable  of  yielding  large  returns  to  labor,  but  —  being 
destructive  of  life  and  health  —  he  dare  not  attempt  to  occupy 
them.  Therefore  it  is,  that  he  is  seen  commencing  his  labors 
where  the  soil  is  poorest  —  and  there  it  is,  that  he  is  earliest  seen 
combining  with  his  neighbors  for  the  acquisition  of  further  power ; 
as  in  the  rocky  Attica ;  the  almost  ice-bound  Norway  and  Ice- 


OF   MECHANICAL  AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        383 

land ;  the  elevated  Bohemia ;  the  mountainous  Savoy ;  and  the 
granitic  New  England  ;  in  all  of  which  we  see  the  habit  of  asso 
ciation  to  have  existed  to  an  extent  elsewhere  unknown. 

§  2.  Before,  however,  Crusoe  could  make  a  bow,  he  needed  to 
have  some  species  of  cutting  instrument;  and  that,  as  we  know,  he 
obtained  in  the  form  of  a  piece  of  flint,  or  other  hard  stone,  whose 
edge  he  had  sharpened  by  means  of  friction.  Look  where  we 
may,  among  even  the  most  savage  tribes,  we  find  them  obtaining 
command  of  certain  natural  forces  —  and  doing  so  by  help  of 
instruments  the  fabrication  of  which  requires  some  acquaintance 
with  the  properties  of  matter.  With  knowledge  comes  power, 
and  with  the  growth  of  power  over  nature  they  obtain  a  con 
stantly  increasing  supply  of  food  and  clothing,  in  return  for  con 
stantly  diminishing  muscular  effort. 

It  is  here,  as  everywhere,  that  the  first  step,  while  the  most 
difficult,  yields  the  smallest  return.  Beginning  with  the  shell, 
man  passes  to  the  flint ;  thence  to  the  knife  of  copper,  bronze, 
iron,  and  steel ;  and  finally  to  the  circular  saw  —  with  every  step 
acquiring  power  for  making  a  next  and  greater  one.  The  spindle 
and  the  loom  must,  in  their  day,  have  been  very  wonderful  inven 
tions — so  much  so,  that  they  sufficed  the  world  for  ages.  In  time, 
however,  came  the  spinning-jenny ;  and  now  the  force  of  steam 
was  substituted  for  that  of  the  human  hand,  with  vast  increase  of 
product.  That,  nevertheless,  was  but  the  first  among  the  steps 
in  that  direction — steam  having,  since  then,  been  made  not  only 
to  weave  the  cloth,  but  to  give  to  it  every  variety  of  color,  and 
of  figure.  From  year  to  year,  we  witness  new  improvements,  any 
one  of  which  exceeds  in  importance  the  whole  of  those  for  which 
we  are  indebted  to  the  thousand  years  preceding  the  opening  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  The  cloth  now  returned  to  the  labors  of 
half  a  dozen  women  is  more  in  quantity  than,  a  century  since, 
could  have  been  obtained  in  return  to  those  of  a  hundred  men. 
But  fifty  years  since,  every  piece  of  bar-iron  required,  for  its  pro 
duction,  the  constantly  intermitted  force  of  men  working  with 
hammers  in  their  hands,  and  obliged,  at  every  blow,  to  raise  the 
instrument,  with  enormous  waste  of  power.  Arriving,  however, 
at  the  knowledge  that  iron  could  be  rolled,  and  by  aid  of  steam, 
man  acquired  the  command  of  a  great  natural  force,  by  means  of 


384  CHAPTER    XV.    §3. 

which  his  labors  were  rendered  more  continuous  and  effective, 
while  greatly  diminished  in  their  demands  upon  his  powers. 
Iron,  becoming  more  easily  acquired,  facilitated  the  acquisition 
of  increased  supplies  of  coal  and  iron  ore,  and  they  in  their  turn 
did  the  same  by  machinery  of  every  kind,  from  the  little  instru 
ments  employed  in  making  pins  and  needles,  to  the  great  steam- 
engine  that  drains  the  mine,  or  drives  the  mill. 

Power  to  direct  the  forces  of  nature  constitutes  wealth.  The 
greater  the  wealth,  the  smaller  is  the  proportion  of  the  labors  of 
man  required  for  effecting  chemical  or  mechanical  changes  in  the 
forms  of  matter,  and  the  larger  is  the  proportion  thereof  that  may 
be  given  to  the  accomplishment  of  those  vital  changes  by  means  of 
which  there  is  obtained  an  increase  in  the  quantity  of  things  sus 
ceptible  of  being  converted.  The  mill,  by  help  of  which  water, 
wind,  or  steam  is  made  to  do  the  work  that  before  required  the 
hand  —  converting  the  grain  into  flour  —  diminished  the  quantity 
of  human  effort  required  for  effecting  changes  in  the  form  of  food, 
and  greatly  increased  that  which  might  be  given  to  the  work  of 
adding  to  the  quantity  of  grain  requiring  to  be  ground.  So,  too, 
the  spinning-jenny,  and  the  power-loom,  by  diminishing  the  labor 
required  for  effecting  changes  in  the  form  of  wool,  set  free  a  large 
amount  of  labor  that  might  be  given  to  augmenting  the  supply  of 
wool.  So,  too,  must  it  be,  in  all  and  every  case  in  which  the 
powers  of  nature  are  brought  to  aid  the  labors  of  man  in  the  work 
of  converting  the  things  yielded  by  our  great  mother  earth  —  the 
proportion  of  his  labor  that  may  be  given  to  augmenting  the 
quantity  of  raw  materials,  tending,  with  every  such  accession  of 
power,  steadily  to  increase. 

The  smaller  the  quantity  of  labor  required  for  the  work  of  con 
version,  the  larger  is  that  which  may  be  given  to  the  preparation 
of  the  great  machine  to  which  we  are  indebted  for  both  food  and 
wool ;  and  the  greater  must  be  the  ability  to  subject  to  cultivation 
the  richer  soils  —  thence  obtaining  the  increased  supplies  of  food 
required  for  enabling  men  to  live  in  close  connection  with  each 
other,  combining  their  efforts  for  obtaining  further  triumphs. 
The  more  they  can  combine,  the  more  rapid  is  the  development  of 
individuality,  and  the  greater  the  power  for  further  progress. 

§  3.    The  facility  of  conversion  growing  with  the  growth  of  the 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        385 

power  of  association,  each  step  in  the  progress  of  society  is  attended 
with  increased  facilities  for  the  maintenance  of  commerce.  Wool 
and  corn  become  converted  into  cloth ;  and  iron  ore,  coal,  cloth, 
and  corn  reappear  in  the  form  of  bars  of  iron,  which,  in  their  turn, 
are  combined  with  additional  food,  to  reappear  in  the  shape  of 
knives ;  and  thus  are  the  products  of  the  earth  condensed  in  form, 
with  constant  diminution  in  the  quantity  of  labor  required  for 
effecting  changes  in  the  place  of  matter  —  and  here  we  have  a  fur 
ther  increase  in  the  proportion  of  the  labor  of  society  that  may  be 
given  to  the  augmentation  of  the  supply  of  commodities  required 
for  the  support  and  comfort  of  man.  The  steam-engines  now  in 
use  in  Great  Britain,  are  estimated  as  being  capable  of  doing  the 
work  of  six  hundred  millions  of  men ;  and,  as  these  are  chiefly 
employed  in  the  work  of  condensing  corn  and  wool  into  cloth  — 
corn,  coal,  and  ore  into  iron — and  iron  into  machinery — their  effect 
should  be  found  in  a  constantly  increasing  ability  to  devote  both 
time  and  mind  to  the  development  of  the  powers  of  the  great  ma 
chine  to  which  we  are  indebted  for  the  food,  the  wool,  the  coal, 
and  the  ore. 

The  planing-machines  of  this  country,  driven  by  steam,  have 
been  stated  as  being  no  less  than  thirty  thousand  in  number  — 
each  doing  the  work  of  sixty  men ;  or,  in  the  whole,  that  of 
eighteen  hundred  thousand  men.  Here  is  great  economy  of 
human  effort,  but  to  this  must  yet  be  added  the  economy  of  labor 
resulting  from  the  transportation  of  finished,  as  compared  with 
unfinished,  products — the  two  combining  to  set  free  a  vast  amount 
of  physical  and  mental  effort,  susceptible  of  being  applied  to  in 
creasing  the  quantity  of  lumber  to  be  sawed  or  planed  ;  of  coal 
and  ore  to  be  converted  into  iron  ;  or  of  wheat  requiring  to  be 
ground  ;  each  and  every  of  which  operations  tends  to  the  develop 
ment  of  the  powers  of  the  earth,  arid  to  fitting  it  for  better  serving 
the  purposes  of  man. 

§  4.  With  every  approach  towards  increased  facility  in  the 
work  of  conversion  near  at  home,  there  is  witnessed  a  wonderful 
increase  in  the  economy  of  human  effort  resulting  from  increased  eco 
nomy  of  the  gifts  of  nature.  The  poor  savage  of  the  West  spends 
days  and  nights  roaming  over  the  prairies  in  search  of  food,  and 
is  yet  obliged  to  waste  the  larger  portion  of  the  products  of  the 


386  CHAPTER   XV.    §  5. 

chase ;  while  the  early  settler  destroys  the  tree  and  sells  its  ashes 
to  distant  men  who  gladly  pay  for  them,  with  all  the  enormous 
cost  of  transportation  added  to  their  original  price.  As  wealth 
and  population  grow,  the  stem  is  made  to  yield  planks  for  houses 
and  mills ;  the  bark  to  help  in  fitting  skins  for  being  converted 
into  shoes  ;  and  the  branches  to  furnish  the  pegs  with  which  those 
shoes  are  made.  The  rags  of  a  poor  and  scattered  settlement  are 
wasted,  but  as  numbers  increase,  mills  appear,  and  these  rags  become 
converted  into  paper.  The  little  and  lonely  furnace  of  the  West 
wastes  half  the  power  afforded  by  its  fuel ;  but  the  great  one  of 
the  East  applies  its  heat  to  drive  the  engine,  and  its  gas  to  heat 
the  blast.  In  the  hands  of  the  chemist,  clay  becomes  alumina,  and 
promises  soon  to  furnish  a  cheap  and  perfect  substitute  for  the 
expensive  silver.  "The  horse-shoe  nails  dropped  in  the  streets 
during  the  daily  traffic,  reappear,"  says  a  recent  writer,  "  in  the 
shape  of  swords  and  guns.  The  clippings  of  the  travelling  tinker 
are,"  as  he  continues,  "mixed  with  the  parings  of  the  horses' 
hoofs  from  the  smithy,  or  the  cast-off  woollen  garments  of  the 
poorest  inhabitants  of  a  sister  isle,  and  soon  afterward,  in  the 
form  of  dyes  of  the  brightest  hue,  grace  the  dress  of  courtly 
dames.  The  main  ingredient  of  the  ink  with  which  we  write  may 
have  been  part  of  the  hoop  of  an  old  beer-barrel.  The  bones  of 
dead  animals  yield  the  chief  constituent  of  lucifer  matches.  The 
dregs  of  wine,  carefully  rejected  by  the  port-wine  drinker  in 
decanting  his  favorite  beverage,  are  taken  by  him  in  the  form  of 
seidlitz  powders,  to  remove  the  effects  of  his  debauch.  The  offal 
of  the  streets  and  the  washing  of  coal-gas  reappear  carefully  pre 
served  in  the  lady's  smelling-bottle,  or  are  used  to  flavor  blanc 
mange  for  her  friends." 

The  pound  of  flax,  having  passed  through  the  hands  of  tne 
lacemaker,  exchanges  for  more  than  its  weight  in  gold.  The 
leaves  of  the  fir  and  the  pine,  in  Silesia,  become  blankets.  The 
scraps  of  leather  become  glue,  and  the  hair  that  is  cut  from  the 
human  head  may  be  exchanged  for  gloves  and  ribbons — and  thus 
it  is  that  as  men  are  more  and  more  enabled  to  associate,  and  to 
combine  their  efforts,  each  and  every  particle  of  matter  is  utilized, 
with  constant  decline  in  the  value  of  commodities  required  for 
their  use,  and  constant  increase  in  the  value  of  man  himself. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        387 

§  5.  Widely  different  is  the  course  of  things  in  countries  whose 
scattered  population  is  compelled  to  waste  its  labors  on  the  poorer 
soils.  In  Carolina,  where  men  yet  cultivate  land  an  acre  of  which 
yields  but  five  bushels  of  wheat,  whole  forests  of  pines  are  frequently 
destroyed  in  the  process  of  obtaining  a  few  crops  of  turpentine  — 
and  then  the  refuse  of  the  turpentine  itself  is  wasted,  because  of 
its  distance  from  any  place  at  which  it  might  be  so  changed  in 
form  as  to  fit  it  for  serving  the  purposes  of  man.*  The  stalks  of 
the  cotton-plant,  capable  of  producing  flax  of  great  strength  and 
beautiful  fibre,  are  burnt  upon  the  plantation,  because  of  the 
absence  of  that  power  which  results  from  combination,  and  by  help 
of  which  they  might  be  rendered  available  for  human  purposes. 
The  seeds  of  the  same  plant,  capable  of  yielding  oil,  are,  in  like 
manner,  wasted. •(•  At  home  and  abroad,  "exceedingly  few  of 
the  fibre-yielding  plants  have  been  taken  up  by  manufacturers, 
and  yet,"  says  Mr.  Ewbank,J  "they  abound  everywhere  —  in 
reeds,  sedges,  and  coarse  grasses,  and  in  the  leaves  of  some  of 
the  commonest  shrubs  and  trees.  The  banana  and  its  relatives" 
would,  as  he  says,  yield,  besides  fruit,  "  from  nine  to  twelve  thou 
sand  pounds  per  acre  of  fibre  of  every  fineness,  from  ropes  to  mus 
lin."  "  Countless  millions  of  tons  of  this,  and  kindred  substances, 
spontaneously  shoot  up  every  year,  and  sink  away  into  the  ground, 
neglected  by  man  ;"  while,  at  the  same  time,  countless  millions  of 
tons  of  the  most  valuable  dye-yielding  woods  are  growing  in  their 
vicinity,  waiting  his  coming  to  yield  themselves  to  his  service. 

Every  article  here  referred  to,  wheresoever  found,  is  as  capable 
of  being  useful  to  man  as  it  would  be  were  it  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Paris,  or  of  London  ;  but  its  utility  is  latent,  and  can  be  deve 
loped  only  by  means  of  association  and  combination  among  men. 
Isolated,  man  finds  himself  unable  to  make  the  first  and  most  dif 
ficult  step,  preparatory  to  the  new  and  greater  ones  that  would 
be  sure  to  follow  in  its  train.  Population  it  is  that  makes  the 
food  come  from  the  rich  soils  of  the  earth,  and  gives  utility  to  all 
the  matter  of  which  that  earth  is  composed ;  with  constant  decline 

*  "  I  saw  this  day,  as  I  shall  hereafter  describe,  three  thousand  barrels  of 
an  article  worth  a  dollar  and  a  half  in  New  York,  thrown  away,  a  mere  heap 
of  useless  oifal,  because  it  would  cost  more  for  transportation  than  it  would 
be  worth."  —  OLMSTEAD  :  Seaboard  Slave  States,  p.  330. 

-j-  The  present  crop,  of  three  and  a  half  millions  of  bales,  is  capable;  as  we 
are  told,  of  yielding;  ninety  millions  of  gallons  of  oil. 

J  The  World  a  Workshop,  p.  89. 


388  CHAPTER    XV.    §5. 

in  the  value  of  all  the  commodities  required  for  the  use  of  man, 
and  constant  increase  in  his  own  value.  Depopulation,  on  the 
contrary — compelling  resort  to  the  poor  soils — deprives  of  utility 
the  matter  by  which  man  is  everywhere  surrounded,  with  constant 
decline  in  his  own  value,  and  in  his  power  to  obtain  supplies  of 
food,  clothing,  or  other  necessaries  of  life. 

So,  too,  is  it  with  intellect.  Increase  of  numbers  bringing  into 
action  all  the  various  faculties  of  man,  every  individual  finds  his 
appropriate  place,  with  steady  increase  of  commerce.  Depopu 
lation,  on  the  contrary  —  forcing  all  men  back  to  the  search  for 
food  —  substitutes  for  intellect  mere  brute  force,  with  constant 
decline  of  commerce.  That  commerce  may  exist,  there  must  be 
difference ;  and  the  greater  the  diversity  of  employment,  the 
more  rapid  must  be  the  circulation,  and  the  greater  must  be  the 
commerce. 

The  weight  of  any  given  community  tends  to  accelerated  in 
crease — every  addition  to  its  numbers  being  attended  with  corre 
sponding  increase  in  the  development  of  the  latent  faculties  of  the 
men  of  whom  it  is  composed.  The  motion  of  society  tends  like 
wise  to  increase  at  a  constantly  accelerated  rate  —  every  increase 
of  individuality  being  attended  with  corresponding  increase  in  the 
power  of  association  and  in  the  continuity  of  action.  Momentum 
being  the  velocity  multiplied  by  the  weight,  and  both  of  these 
latter  tending  to  constant  acceleration  in  the  rate  of  increase,  we 
may  now,  without  difficulty,  understand  why  it  is,  that  the  force 
exerted  by  a  community  tends  to  grow  at  a  rate  so  much  more 
rapid  than  would  be  indicated  by  its  increase  in  numbers.  Taking 
ten  for  the  present  weight,  and  the  same  number  for  the  velocity, 
the  momentum  would  be  a  hundred.  Doubling  the  numbers  in  a 
period  of  five-and-twenty  years — and  allowing  the  development  of 
intellectual  faculty  to  be  in  the  same  ratio,  the  weight,  at  the  close 
of  the  term,  would  be  quadrupled ;  and,  allowing  for  increased 
facility  of  combination,  resulting  from  increase  of  numbers  and 
correspondent  economy  of  labor,  and  of  the  products  of  the  earth, 
we  obtain  the  same  quantity  as  representing  the  velocity ;  and 
the  two,  multiplied  into  each  other,  give  now  sixteen  hundred, 
instead  of  the  two  hundred  that  would  be  obtained  were  the  pro 
ductive  power  of  the  individual  to  remain  unchanged. 

The  tendency  to  the  development  of  the  resources  of  the  earth, 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES    OF    FORM.         389 

and  of  the  powers  of  man,  being  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  motion 
of  society,  and  being  always  attended  with  that  increase  of  local 
attraction  which  produces  love  of  home ;  it  follows,  necessarily, 
that  a  community  must  grow  in  individuality,  and  in  force,  with 
the  growth  of  the  power  of,  and  the  desire  for,  association  among 
the  individuals  of  whom  it  is  composed. 

§  6.  The  motion  of  society,  and  the  power  of  man,  tend  to  in 
crease  in  a  geometrical  ratio,  whenever  men  are  permitted  to  pro 
ceed  onward,  and  undisturbed,  towards  the  establishment  of  power 
over  nature,  to  be  acquired  by  means  of  combination  with  their 
fellow-men.  Look,  however,  where  we  may,  we  see  his  progress 
in  that  direction  to  have  been,  at  times,  impeded,  and  sometimes 
altogether  arrested  j  while  at  others  he  has  so  far  retrograded  as 
to  have  been  compelled  to  abandon  the  most  fertile  soils,  after 
having  incurred  the  great  expenditure  of  physical  and  mental 
force  required  for  their  subjugation  —  as  in  hither  Asia,  Egypt, 
Greece,  and  Italy,  of  olden  time  ;  and  in  Ireland,  India,  Jamaica, 
Virginia,  and  Carolina,  of  the  modern  one  —  occurrences,  into 
the  causes  of  which  we  may  now  inquire. 

The  history  of  the  world,  in  its  every  chapter,  presents  the 
strong  man  trampling  on  the  weak  one,  and  the  latter  seeking,  by 
means  of  combination  with  his  fellow-men,  to  set  limits  to  the 
power  of  those  by  whom  he  was  oppressed.  The  former,  as  we 
see,  has  everywhere  appropriated  to  himself  large  bodies  of  land 
—  compelling  the  latter  to  cultivate  it  for  him,  and  requiring  him 
to  use  not  only  his  land,  but  his  mills,  and  his  machinery  of  every 
description,  whenever  he  sought  to  effect  changes,  whether  in  the 
places,  or  in  the  forms,  of  matter. 

At  times,  the  former  has  compounded  with  his  tax-payers  for 
certain  portions  of  the  produce,  taking  sometimes  three-fourths, 
two-thirds,  or  one-half;  but  even  then  has  generally  required  that 
when  they  needed  to  convert  their  grain  into  flour,  they  should 
pay  for  the  privilege  of  so  doing ;  that  another  tax  should  be 
paid  when  they  desired  to  convert  it  into  bread  ;  and  a  still  fur 
ther  one  when  they  sought  to  exchange  their  bread,  or  their  grain, 
with  their  neighbors  for  other  commodities  required  for  their  pur 
poses.  If  they  wished  to  change  their  wool  into  cloth,  they  were 
obliged  to  pay  for  that  privilege  in  the  form  of  excise,  or  other 


390  CHAPTER   XV.    §  6. 

duties.  If  the  people  of  the  town  and  country  sought  to  maintain 
commerce,  the  permission  so  to  do  was  to  be  paid  for  in  the  shape 
of  duties  of  octroi,  as  in  France ;  or  if,  as  in  Spain,  they  desired 
to  make  any  species  of  exchanges,  those  who  performed  the  duties 
of  government  claimed  a  tenth  on  every  transfer  of  property,  as 
alcavala.  The  right  to  labor  has  been  held  to  be  a  privilege,  the 
exercise  of  which  required  a  patent,  to  be  paid  for  at  a  heavy 
price.  In  every  form,  the  few  who  were  strong  and  enabled  to 
live  by  virtue  of  the  exercise  of  their  power  of  appropriation,  have 
sought  to  prevent  the  many,  who,  individually,  were  weak,  from 
combining  their  efforts  —  except  on  conditions  dictated  by  them 
selves.  Slavery  has  existed  in  a  variety  of  forms,  sometimes 
more,  and  at  others  less,  oppressive ;  but  it  has,  in  all  cases, 
resulted  from  the  efforts  of  those  who  were  strong  of  body,  or  of 
mind,  to  deprive  those  who  were  weak,  of  the  power  to  determine 
for  whom  they  would  work,  or  what  should  be  their  reward — and 
thus  to  prevent  the  growth  of  commerce. 

As,  however,  population  has  increased,  men  have  been  more 
and  more  enabled  to  combine  together  for  the  acquisition  of 
power  over  their  own  actions,  and  over  the  natural  forces  by 
which  their  efforts  might  be  so  much  aided  —  building  towns,  or 
local  centres,  in  which  the  artisan  and  the  trader  could  associate 
for  self-defence.  The  more  they  could  associate,  the  more  indi 
viduality  became  developed-;  and  therefore  is  it  that  we  see  free 
dom  to  have  grown  so  rapidly  in  the  towns  and  cities  of  Greece 
and  Italy,  in  those  of  France  and  Germany,  the  Netherlands  and 
England. 

Power  thus  resulted  from  association  and  combination,  but  its 
acquisition  has  but  too  generally  been  accompanied  by  a  selfish 
desire  for  securing  to  the  associates  monopolies  of  its  exercise,  to 
be  enjoyed  at  the  expense  of  their  fellow-men.  The  Phoenicians 
carefully  guarded  the  secret  of  their  dyes;  and  the  Venetians  were 
so  jealous  of  their  secrets,  that  they  reduced  their  artisans  to  a 
condition  approaching  that  of  slavery,  by  prohibition  of  their  emi 
gration.  The  Flemings,  in  their  turn — having  succeeded  in  esta 
blishing  among  themselves  the  diversity  of  employments  required 
for  the  development  of  intellectual  force,  for  economizing  human 
labor,  and  for  utilizing  the  products  of  the  earth  —  exercised, 
during  a  long  period  of  time,  the  power  of  association  to  an 


OP   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        391 

extent  then  unparalleled  in  any  part  of  Northern  or  Central 
Europe.  Even  here,  however,  the  spirit  of  monopoly  made  its 
appearance,  bringing  with  it  regulations  tending  to  give  the 
trader  advantages  over  the  workman  on  the  one  hand,  and  over 
the  producer  of  raw  materials  on  the  other  —  and  thereby  pro 
ducing  an  emigration  of  the  former,  and  a  war  of  tariffs  on  the 
part  of  the  latter  ;  and  in  due  season  Flemish  power  followed  in 
the  wake  of  that  of  Carthage  and  of  Tyre.  The  Dutch,  profiting 
by  the  difficulties  of  their  Flemish  rivals,  became  the  most  exten 
sive  manufacturers  of  Europe  ;  but  they,  in  their  turn  —  while 
enlarging  in  all  directions  their  dominion — gave  to  various  bodies 
monopoly  powers,  having  for  their  object  the  prevention  of  any 
intercourse  between  important  portions  of  the  world,  except  by 
means  of  their  own  ships,  their  own  ports,  their  seamen,  and  their 
merchants.  The  oppressive  character  of  this  system  forced  both 
France  and  England  to  measures  of  resistance,  exhibited  in  the 
navigation  act  of  Cromwell,  and  the  tonnage  duties,  and  tariff,  of 
Colbert ;  and  the  power  of  Holland  commenced  from  that  period 
to  pass  away,  as  that  of  Venice  and  of  Genoa  had  already  done. 
In  all  these  cases,  the  object  in  view  had  been  that  of  prevent 
ing  circulation  abroad,  with  a  view  to  produce  increase  of  motion 
at  home,  and  to  foster  centralization  by  compelling  commerce  to 
pay  extra  taxes  in  the  form  of  transportation,  for  their  emolument  j 
and  in  all,  the  results,  as  we  see,  proved  to  be  the  same  —  failure 
and  decline,  even  where  not  ending  in  absolute  ruin. 

§  7.  Among  individuals,  selfishness  generally  defeats  itself; 
and  as  it  is  with  them,  so  is  it  with  nations.  All  the  communities 
above  referred  sought  to  obtain  strength  and  power,  not  in  com- 
pany  with  other  —  not  by  commerce  with  them,  based  upon  the 
extension  of  commerce  among  themselves  —  but  by  carrying  on 
trade  for  them,  with  a  view  to  enrich  themselves  at  others'  ex 
pense.  The  natural  rights  of  all  were  equal ;  and,  had  that  prin 
ciple  been  fully  recognised,  all  might  have  grown  rich,  strong,  and 
free  together ;  but,  as  it  was,  they,  each  and  all,  first  impoverished 
their  weaker  neighbors,  and  then  found  themselves,  in  turn,  impo 
verished  by  means  of  the  very  measures  to  which  they  had  looked 
for  increase  of  wealth  and  power.  The  perfect  harmony  of  all 
real  interests,  and  the  advantage  of  sound  international  morality, 


392  CHAPTER   XV.    §  7. 

are  lessons  taught  in  every  page  of  history ;  and  yet,  after  so 
many  centuries  of  experience,  the  leading  nations  of  the  world 
are,  even  now,  acting  as  if  the  road  to  prosperity  for  themselves 
was  to  be  found  only  through  the  adoption  of  measures  tending 
to  the  injury  of  all  around  them. 

That  the  power  to  control  the  forces  of  nature  should  be  bene 
ficial  to  mankind,  it  is  indispensable  that  the  knowledge  by  which 
it  is  acquired  should  be  extensively  diffused.  Give  to  a  single 
member  of  a  community  the  secret  of  gunpowder,  and  enable  him 
to  monopolize  it — and  he  will  enslave  his  neighbors.  In  time,  the 
latter  may,  perhaps,  obtain  the  knowledge  how  to  make  it ;  but 
this  they  will  do,  if  ever,  in  despite  of  all  the  resistance  that  can 
be  opposed  by  the  monopolist  —  already  become  so  powerful  as 
to  be  enabled  to  prohibit  combination  among  his  poor  dependants. 
So  is  it,  too,  with  nations.  Limit  to  a  single  one  the  command 
of  steam,  or  the  power  to  convert  wool  into  cloth,  coal  and  ore 
into  iron,  or  grain  into  flour,  and  it  would  assuredly  become  the 
tyrant  of  the  world,  to  the  injury  of  all,  itself  included.  Centrali 
zation,  find  it  where  we  may,  looks  to  poverty,  slavery,  and  death 
— and  so  entirely  is  this  the  case  in  regard  to  scientific  knowledge, 
that  it  would  be  better  that  the  power  of  steam  had  no  existence, 
than  that  the  command  of  such  a  force  should  be  limited  to  any 
single  community  of  the  ivorld.  For  a  time,  that  community 
might  be,  itself,  enriched  ;  but  with  slavery  there,  as  everywhere, 
the  damage  to  the  slave  would  recoil  upon  the  master.  Exhaust 
ing  all  the  surrounding  communities,  it  would  itself  speedily  find 
arising  the  disease  of  ' '  over-population"  —  tending  to  the  pro 
duction  at  home  of  the  same  slavery  of  which  it  had  been  the  cause 
abroad. 

Trade  had  built  up,  among  the  Flemings,  large  fortunes,  the 
possession  of  which  but  stimulated  the  appetites  of  their  owners 
for  further  acquisition  —  while  increasing  their  power  for  control 
ling  the  movements  of  other  nations,  with  a  view  to  the  accom 
plishment  of  their  selfish  objects.  To  that  end,  they  sought 
monopoly  at  home  and  abroad  ;  but  the  effect  proved  widely  dif 
ferent  from  their  expectations  —  their  measures  producing  resist 
ance  both  within  and  without.  Workmen,  flying  to  England,  found 
in  Edward  III.  a  monarch  fully  sensible  of  the  advantages  which 
must  result  from  enabling  the  farmer  and  the  artisan  to  take  their 


OP   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES    OF    FORM. 


393 


places  by  each  other's  side — and  one,  too,  able  and  willing  to  grant 
them  all  the  protection  they  required.  Not  only  were  franchises 
granted  to  them,  but  all  restrictions  upon  domestic  commerce, 
so  far  as  related  to  the  making  of  cloth,  were  at  once  repealed  ; 
while  by  an  act  of  Parliament,  of  1337,  the  export  of  wool  and 
the  import  of  cloth  were  both  prohibited.  The  selfishness  of  the 
Flemings,  in  their  efforts  to  monopolize  the  knowledge  they  had 
acquired,  with  a  view  to  convert  the  gifts  of  nature  into  machi 
nery  of  oppression,  had  thus  produced  resistance,  whose  effects 
will  be  considered  in  another  chapter. 


VOL.  I.— 26 


394  CHAPTER   XVI.    §  1. 


CHAPTER    XVI. 

THE    SAME   SUBJECT   CONTINUED. 

§  1.  AT  the  opening  of  the  fourteenth  century,  the  commerce 
of  England  was  such  as  indicated  a  very  rude  condition  of  its  peo 
ple — wool,  hides,  and  tin,  with  the  latter  of  which  it  had  for  ages 
supplied  the  world,  constituting  the  list  of  exports,  and  cloth  the 
chief  article  of  import.  The  custom  of  foreign  nations,  for  these 
raw  materials,  was  courted  by  means  of  grants  of  privileges  to 
their  merchants,  while  oppressive  export  duties  threw  upon  the 
farmers  of  the  country  all  the  burden  of  the  government.  Sent 
abroad  in  their  rudest  state,  their  products  came  back  to  them  in 
the  form  of  cloth,  and  were  then  admitted  on  the  payment  of  a 
merely  nominal  duty,  of  less  than  one  per  cent.*  Raw  produce 
Vas,  consequently,  very  cheap,  while  manufactured  commodities 
were  very  dear. 

Commerce  at  home  was  impeded  by  countless  restrictions,  while 
all  the  domestic  markets,  in  towns'  and  fairs,  were  so  freely  opened 
to  the  Flemish  and  other  manufacturers,  that  in  reading  the  his 
tory  of  the  Plantagenets  it  is-  difficult  to  avoid  being  struck  with 
the  identity  of  the  English  system  of  that  day  with  the  Turkish 
one  of  our  own — that  under  which  the  Ottoman  Empire  has  sunk 
to  its  present  state  of  inanition.  While  enjoying  privileges  within 
the  kingdom  the  exercise  of  which  was  denied  to  Englishmen,  the 
foreign  merchants  were  unsparing  in  their  efforts  to  monopolize 
the  purchase  of  the  raw  material  on  one  side  of  the  Channel,  and 
the  conversion  of  it  on  the  other — and  thus  to  maintain  the  largest 
difference  between  the  prices  of  the  wool  they  needed  to  buy  and 
the  cloth  they  desired  to  sell.  To  carry  into  effect  these  views 

*  The  price  of  wool  being  fixed  in  the  market  of  the  world,  was  entirely 
unaffected  by  the  division  that  might  be  made  between  the  government  and 
the  people.  Of  that  price  the  government  claimed  one-third  —  and  this  was 
purely  and  simply  a  direct  tax. 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        395 

was  the  object  of  the  regulations  of  the  Flemish  cities  to  which 
reference  has  above  been  made. 

The  power  of  association  —  or  commerce  —  then  scarcely  at  all 
existed  in  England  —  diversity  of  employment  being  a  thing  but 
little  known.  As  a  consequence,  although  wool  was  low  in  price, 
all  articles  of  food  were  yet,  by  comparison,  greatly  lower  —  their 
bulk  being  quite  too  great  to  admit  of  their  exportation  to  distant 
countries,  and  there  being  little  market  for  them  at  home.  The 
former  —  representing  food  that  had  undergone  a  single  process 
of  manufacture  —  commanded,  ton  for  ton,  twenty  times  as  much 
of  the  precious  metals.  The  cost  of  transportation  being,  there 
fore,  comparatively  small,  it  could,  with  some  facility,  travel  to  a 
distance  ;  whereas,  food  was  often  being  wasted  in  one  part  of  the 
kingdom  when  famine  prevailed  in  others  ;  and  therefore  it  was 
that  sheep  and  hogs  constituted  almost  the  entire  capital  of  those 
who  professed  to  farm  the  land. 

The  facts  thus  presented  for  consideration,  by  England  of  that 
day,  are  identical  with  those  occurring  in  the  purely  agricultural 
countries  of  *bur  own.  The  cotton  of  India  can  be  sent  to  a  dis 
tance,  because  it,  like  the  English  wool,  is  the  representative  of 
food  that  has  undergone  a  single  process  of  manufacture.  The 
food  of  India  cannot  travel  even  from  one  part  of  the  country  to 
another  ;  and  therefore  it  is  that  famines  prevail  in  one  district, 
while  corn  perishes  for  want  of  demand  in  others.  The  Russian 
corn  can,  with  difficulty,  go  abroad,  but  its  wool  can  readily  do 
so.  The  corn  of  Illinois  and  Iowa  is  to  so  great  an  extent  ab 
sorbed  on  the  road  to  market,  that  the  farmer  desires,  wherever 
possible,  to  subject  it  to  the  first  rude  process  of  manufacture,  and 
therefore  passes  it  through  the  stomach  of  the  hog  —  carrying  it 
to  market  in  the  form  of  pork.  That  of  Virginia  is  passed 
through  the  stomachs  of  negro  men  and  women,  and  taken  to 
market  in  the  form  of  slaves.  That  of  Carolina,  after  having 
been  digested  by  men  and  women,  finds  its  way  to  England  in 
the  shape  of  cotton. —  In  the  latter,  the  necessity  for  effecting 
changes  of  place  was — as  it  now  is  —  felt  to  be  the  great  obstacle 
to  improvement ;  and,  as  that  diminished  with  every  diminution 
in  the  bulk  of  the  commodities  requiring  to  be  transported,  it  is 
no  matter  of  surprise  that  we  find  the  common  sense  of  the  Eng 
lish  people  leading  them  to  take  the  first  step  in  the  career  whose 


396  CHAPTER   XVI.    §  2. 

advantage  was  afterwards  so  clearly  exhibited  by  Adain  Smith, 
when  showing  how  great  was  the  weight  of  corn  and  wool  con 
tained  in  a  piece  of  cloth ;  and  how  easily  the  two  could  be  trans 
ported  when  they  had  assumed  that  form. 

Then,  as  now,  distance  from  market  was  productive  of  great 
unsteadiness  in  the  demand  for,  and  the  supply  of,  the  bulky  pro 
ducts  of  the  earth — the  laborer  perishing  at  one  moment  for  want 
of  food ;  and  the  farmer,  at  the  next,  being  ruined  for  want  of 
people  who  required  to  eat,  and  were  able  to  pay  for  the  corn  he 
desired  to  sell.  From  1302  to  131f,  the  price  of  wheat  rose 
steadily,  until  from  12s.  in  the  first,  it  had  attained  £5  18s.  in  the 
last;  and  then,  but  a  few  years  later,  we  find  it  down  to  6s., 
10s.,  and  £1  Is.*  Cultivation  was  limited  everywhere  to  the 
superficial  soils  —  the  richest  lands  of  the  kingdom  being  then,  as 
for  centuries  afterwards  they  continued  to  be,  so  covered  with 
wood,  or  so  saturated  with  moisture,  as  to  render  them  useless  for 
any  of  the  purposes  of  man.  On  the  opposite  side  of  the  Chan 
nel,  all  was  different.  Combination  of  action,  resulting  from 
diversity  of  employment,  having  brought  into  activity  the  richest 
soils,  agriculture  had  already  attained  a  position  higher,  proba 
bly,  than  that  occupied  by  any  part  of  England,  even  at  the  open 
ing  of  the  eighteenth  century.  With  every  day,  the  people  of 
Holland,  and  of  Flanders,  were  then  obtaining  greater  power 
over  nature,  and  greater  facilities  for  the  accumulation  of  further 
wealth. 

§  2.  Such  was  tne  state  of  things  in  England  at  the  date  of  the 
passage  of  the  act  prohibiting  the  export  of  wool  and  the  import 
of  cloth.  It  was  a  measure  of  resistance,  looking  to  the  protec 
tion  of  the  English  farmer  against  the  monopolies  of  the  Flemish 
manufacturers  ;  and,  as  such,  tended  greatly  to  the  promotion  of 
commerce,  f  In  this  proceeding,  however,  the  usual  error  of  refor- 

*  These  prices  are  in  money  of  the  present  time,  as  given  by  Adam  Smith, 
Wealth  of  Nations,  book  1,  chap.  xi. 

j-  "Edward  III.,  and  others  of  our  princes,  incurred  no  little  odium  by  the 
judicious  protection  -which  they  afforded  to  the  foreign  manufacturers  who 
took  refuge  among  us."  —  McCuLLOCH:  Discourse  introductory  to  the  Wealth 
of  Nations,  p.  xxv. 

Mr.  McCulloch  is,  nevertheless,  an  opponent  of  the  system  which  looks  to 
extending  the  same  protection  in  the  present  time,  even  where  the  circum 
stances  are  precisely  similar. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OP   FORM.        39 1 

mers — that  of  going  too  far  and  fast — is  clearly  obvious.  When 
nature  works  most  beneficially  for  man,  she  works  slowly ;  and 
what  is  true  in  the  natural  world,  cannot  be  other  than  true  in  the 
social  one.  Man  as  rarely  profits  by  violent  changes  in  the  socie- 
tary  edifice,  as  he  does  by  earthquakes,  or  by  water-spouts.  The 
difficulty  of  the  English  corn  and  wool  growers  consisted  in  the 
absence  of  competition  for  the  purchase  of  their  commodities, 
consequent  upon  long-continued  dependence  upon  a  single  and 
distant  market.  Its  remedy  was  to  be  found  under  a  system  of 
alterative  treatment  looking  to  the  creation  of  a  domestic  one  — 
while  leaving  untouched  the  export  of  the  raw  material  required 
for  the  supply  of  distant  countries. 

What  was  required  for  giving  the  producer  a  choice  of  mar 
kets,  was  the  imposition  of  such  a  duty  on  foreign  cloths  as  would 
have  made  it  the  interest  of  the  foreign  weaver  to  come  to  him 
and  consume  his  bulky  corn,  while  converting  into  cloth  his  more 
compact  wool.  Such  a  measure  might  have  been  fully  and 
promptly  carried  into  effect,  and  its  adoption  would  have  given 
all  the  advantages  that  could  have  been  expected  from  the  other, 
while  unattended  by  any  counterbalancing  disadvantages.  As  it 
was,  however,  the  nation  being  poor,  and  the  ability  to  purchase 
foreign  merchandise,  consequently,  very  small,  while  the  necessi 
ties  of  the  king  were  very  great,  the  latter  needed,  as  far  as  pos 
sible,  to  retain  all  the  accustomed  sources  of  revenue ;  among 
which  that  afforded  by  the  export  of  wool  stood  forth  most  con 
spicuous.  The  prohibition  of  the  trade  throwing  it  chiefly  into 
his  own  hands,  he  continued  largely  to  profit  by  it.  The  one 
great  measure,  however,  the  establishment  of  direct  commerce 
between  the  producer  of  wool  and  corn  and  the  consumer  of 
cloth,  was,  in  some  degree,  accomplished  ;  and  from  that  time 
forth  there  was  a  daily  increase  in  the  power  of  voluntary  associa 
tion,  manifested  by  the  building  of  new  towns  and  enlargement  of 
old  ones ;  by  the  enfranchisement  of  serfs ;  and  by  the  growing 
power  of  the  Commons  to  direct  the  movements  of  the  ship  of 
state.  Magna  Charta  provided  for  securing  the  privileges  of  the 
aristocracy;  but  the  statute  of  1347  laid  the  foundation  of  the 
liberties  of  the  people,  by  providing  for  the  diversity  of  their  em 
ployments  and  the  development  of  their  various  individualities ; 
as  a  consequence  of  which  the  change  of  system  was  followed  by  a 


398  CHAPTER   XVI.    §  3. 

rapid  increase  in  the  amount  of  force  at  the  command  of  the  com 
munity  itself. 

§  3.  For  centuries,  nevertheless,  England  continued  to  be  an 
importer  of  cloth,  iron,  and  other  manufactured  commodities,  and 
an  exporter  of  raw  materials  —  a  course  of  things  leading  neces 
sarily  to  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil,  and  to  great  waste  of  mental 
and  physical  force.  That  force  represented  the  capital  consumed 
in  the  form  of  food,  the  quantity  of  which  required  for  the  proper 
nourishment  of  the  population  was  just  as  great  as  it  could  have 
been  had  all  the  time  been  profitably  employed  ;  but  that  it  could 
not  be,  in  default  of  the  power  to  maintain  commerce,  the  condition 
of  whose  existence  is  found  in  the  rapidity  of  circulation  result 
ing  from  diversity  in  the  modes  of  employment.  The  mass  of  the 
force  produced  being  wasted,  the  people  remained  poor — requir 
ing  laws  providing  for  their  compulsory  support  out  of  the  pro 
duce  of  the  land  ;  and  hence  arose  a  necessity  for  establishing  a 
forced  circulation  by  means  of  poor  laws,  the  commencement  of 
which  is  found  in  the  act  of  43  Elizabeth. 

The  community  continued  poor  and  weak  as  compared  with 
others  across  the  Channel,  in  which  employments  were  more  diver 
sified  ;  and  hence  it  is  that  we  find  the  Dutch  enjoying  almost  a 
monopoly  of  the  privilege  of  managing  the  commerce  of  England 
with  foreign  countries.  The  period  of  the  Protectorate  brought 
with  it,  however,  a  successful  effort  at  establishing  direct  com 
merce  with  distant  nations,  by  means  of  navigation  laws,  that  laid 
the  foundation  of  British  power  on  the  ocean  at  the  present  day. 
For  a  still  later  one  it  was  reserved  to  witness  a  similar  effort  for 
the  promotion  of  commerce  at  home,  by  establishing  direct  inter 
course  between  the  producers  of  food  on  one  hand,  and  the  con 
sumers  of  shoes  and  stockings,  hats,  caps,  and  bonnets,  on  the 
other — between  the  men  who  had  labor  to  sell,  and  those  who  had 
corn  or  wool,  cloth  or  iron,  with  which  to  buy  it.  The  distinction 
of  having  been  the  first  to  suggest  the  measures  that  since  have 
led  to  the  manufacturing  greatness  of  England,  has  recently  been 
claimed  for  Andrew  Yarranton,  some  extracts  from  whose  work* 

*  England's  Improvement  by  Sea  and  Land.  To  Outdo  the  Dutch  without 
Fighting.  To  pay  Debts  without  Moneys.  To  set  at  work  the  Poor  of  England 
with  the  Growth  of  our  own  Lands,  $c.  $c.  By  ANDREW  YARRANTON.  London, 
1677. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        399 

will  enable  the  reader  to  see  what  was  the  then  position  of  the 
English  farmer ;  and  why  it  was  that  protection  was  deemed  to 
be  required  : — * 

' '  From  France  were  imported  '  canvases,  lockrums,  and  great 
quantities  of  coarse  cloths,'  so  much  so,  in  .fact,  'that  it  hath 
almost  laid  aside  the  making  of  linen  cloth  in  England.'  Twine 
and  yarn  were  also  imported  to  make  sail-cloth  and  cordagef 
'  which  hath  taken  off  the  labor  of  multitudes  of  people  in  Suffolk 
and  thereabouts,  and  hath  so  lessened  the  trade  that  it  is  almost 
lost.'  Narrow  coarse  cloths  were  imported  from  north  Germany, 
'  the  cheapness  whereof  hath  beaten  out  the  linen  trade  formerly 
made  in  Lancashire,  Cheshire,  and  thereabouts,  about  forty  years 
since,  a  very  great  trade.'  Bed-ticking  was  also  imported,  which 
had  '  almost  destroyed  that  trade  in  Dorsetshire,  and  Somerset 
shire,  so  the  spinners  are  idle,  and  the  lands  fall  in  price. '  Yarns 
were  imported  from  Germany.  '  Formerly,  the  clothiers  made 
use  of  linen  yarn  spun  in  that  country,  (the  neighborhood  of  Kid 
derminster,)  to  make  their  lynsey-woolseys,  but  now  the  cheapness 
of  the  foreign  threads  hath  put  them  upon  making  use  of  German 
yarn.  Great  quantities  of  thread  (yarn)  also  are  used  at  Man 
chester,  Maidstone,  and  in  other  parts  of  England,  to  mix  with 
woollen  ;  with  infinite  other  commodities  ;  and  all  the  benefit  of 
the  labor  of  these  threads  is  applied  to  foreigners.'  r 

The  remedy  for  this  state  of  things  was,  according  to  Yarran- 
ton,  to  be  found  in  importing  the  skill,  to  which  end  he  gave  the 
following  advice : — 

' '  '  Send  for  one  man  from  Friburgh,  to  put  you  in  the  true  way 
and  method  of  making  the  tape,  and  to  bring  over  two  engines — 
one  to  weave  narrow  tape,  and  the  other  to  weave  broad  tape, 
with  wheels  to  spin.  (The  German  wheels  were  much  superior  to 
the  English.) 

"  *  Send  for  one  man  from  Dort,  in  Holland,  to  put  you  in  the 
true  way  of  ordering  the  fine  threads. 

*  The  following  passages  are  from  a  recent  work — Dove's  Elements  of  Poli 
tical  Science — in  which  are  given  copious  extracts  from  Yarranton's  remark 
able  book.  They  are  here  copied  at  some  length,  because  the  facts  they 
record  correspond  so  precisely  with  those  of  all  other  countries  of  the  pre 
sent  day  engaged  in  exporting  raw  materials  and  importing  manufactured 
commodities.  The  difficulties  now  to  be  overcome  by  them  are  the  same 
that  then  existed  in  England,  and  the  remedial  measures  now  pursued  in 
the  advancing  countries  of  the  world  are  the  same  that  are  here  suggested. 


400  CHAPTER   XVI.    §  3. 

"  '  Send  for  a  spinning-mistress  out  of  Germany,  to  order  and 
govern  the  little  maids,  and  instruct  them  in  the  art  of  spinning. 

"  '  Send  for  a  man  from  Harlem,  in  Holland,  to  whiten  (bleach) 
your  tapes  and  threads.'  " 

Regarding  the  iron  manufacture  as  being,  next  to  linen,  of  the 
first  importance,  he  says  — 

"  '  Consider  how  many  iron-works  are  laid  down'  (abandoned) 
'  both  in  Kent,  Sussex,  and  Surrey,  and  many  more  must  follow. 
The  reason  is,  the  iron  from  Sweadland,  (Sweden,)  Flanders, 
and  Spain  comes  in  so  cheap,  that  it  cannot  be  made  to  profit 
here.  *  *  * 

"  '  Now  I  have  showed  you  the  two  manufactures  of  linen  and 
iron,  with  the  product  thereof,  and  all  the  materials  are  with  us 
growing ;  and  these  two  manufactures  will,  if  by  law  counte 
nanced,  set  all  the  poor  in  England  at  work,  and  much  enrich 
the  country,  and  thereby  fetch  people  into  the  kingdom,  whereas 
now  they  depart;'  (yes,  honest  Andrew,  and  now  also  they  de 
part  ;)  '  and  thereby  deprive  the  Dutch  of  these  two  great  manu 
factures  of  iron  and  linen.  I  mean,  iron  wrought  into  all  commo 
dities,  so  vastly  brought  down  the  Rhine  into  Holland  from  Liege, 
Gluke,  Soley,  and  Cologne,  and  by  them  diffused  and  sent  all  the 
world  over.  And  these  two  trades  being  well  fixed  here,  will  help 
to  beat  the  Dutch  without  fighting.  I  pray,  consider  the  charge 
England  is  now  at  with  the  poor,  and  observe  what  they  now  cost 
the  public  ;  but,  if  employed  in  these  two  manufactures,  what  ad 
vance  by  their  labor  might  the  public  receive  !  Admit  there  be 
in  England  and  Wales  a  hundred  thousand  poor  people  unem 
ployed,  and  each  one  costs  the  public  fourpence  the  day  in  food, 
and,  if  these  were  employed,  they  would  earn  eightpence  the  day ; 
and  so  the  public,  in  what  might  be  gained  and  saved,  will  advance 
twelvepence  the  day  by  each  poor  person  now  unemployed.  So  a 
hundred  thousand  persons  will  be  to  the  benefit  of  the  public,  if 
employed,  one  million  and  a  half  yearly  in  these  two  manufactures 
of  iron  and  linen.  And  as  these  two  manufactures  are  now  man 
aged  in  Saxony,  they  set  all  their  poor  at  work.  I,  travelling 
aworter  and  across  Saxony,  did  not  see  one  beggar  there ;  and 
these  two  manufactures  being  prudently  and  by  good  laws,  there 
supported  and  encouraged,  they  are  become  two  parts  in  three 
of  the  revenue  and  benefit  of  that  duke ;  and  they  are  sent  into 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        401 

England  at  this  time  in  great  quantities,  all  paying  customs  in 
ten  several  places  before  they  come  here.  * 

"  'But  there  is  something  that  may  be  of  worse  consequence 
than  ordinary,  if  the  iron  manufacture  be  not  encouraged.  At 
present,  most  of  the  works  in  Sussex  and  Surrey  are  laid  down, 
and  many  in  the  north  of  England,  and  many  in  other  parts,  must 
follow,  if  not  prevented  by  enclosing  commons  to  supply  them 
with  wood.  And  when  the  greatest  part  of  the  iron-works  are 
asleep,  if  there  should  be  occasion  for  great  quantities  of  guns 
and  bullets/ — (always  guns  and  bullets, 

*  As  if  the  metals  were  intended 
For  nothing  else  but  to  kill  men  dead,') — 

'  and  other  sorts  of  iron  commodities,  for  a  present  unexpected 
war,  and  the  Sound  happen  to  be  locked  up,  and  so  prevent  iron 
coming  to  us,  truly  we  should  then  be  in  a  fine  case  I ' 

"  The  next  branch  of  industry  to  which  Andrew  directed  the 
attention  of  his  countrymen  was  the  woollen  trade  ;  and  this  he 
proposes  to  improve  by  the  adoption  of  the  processes  which  en 
abled  the  foreigner  to  make  a  handsomer  cloth  than  was  made  in 
England.  Here  his  advice  was,  '  import  the  machinery.'  Two 
pieces  of  the  same  web  of  cloth  may  be  so  differently  dressed,  that 
the  one  shall  be  coarse,  hard,  unpleasant  to  the  wear,  unattractive 
to  the  eye,  and  comparatively  unsuited  to  the  market.  The  other 
piece,  although  made  of  the  same  wool,  and  woven  in  the  same 
loom,  may  be  so  judiciously  treated  as  to  assume  qualities  of  an 
entirely  different  character.  Dressing,  in  fact,  is  the  education 
of  cloth — the  woollen  fabric,  like  the  man  who  wears  it,  may  grow 
up  a  boor  or  a  gentleman.  Andrew,  then,  tells  his  countrymen 
how  they  may  dress  their  cloths,  and  make  them  of  a  superior 
quality ;  and  this  he  does  in  a  dialogue  which  would  do  no  dis 
credit  to  Izaak  Walton.  Before  considering  his  method,  how 
ever,  we  must  notice  one  of  his  statements  —  so  contrary  as  it  is 
to  the  common  supposition  that  manufacturers  were  flocking  into 
England.  This  they  had  done  a  century  before ;  but  Andrew 
assures  us  that,  in  his  day,  the  manufacturers  were  actually  emi 
grating  to  Germany,  Ireland,  and  Holland.  His  statements  on 
this  head,  although  concise,  are  quite  explicit.  We  shall  cite 


402  CHAPTER   XVI.    §  3. 

only  one,  premising  that  he  is  speaking  of  those  practices  which 
were  calculated  to  injure  the  trade  of  England  : — 

"' Another  trick  there  is  of  carrying  fullers'  earth  from  Wo- 
borne  to  Lynn  in  Norfolk,  as  they  pretend ;  and  then  ship  it  to 
be  carried  to  the  clothiers  in  the  west,  and  when  at  sea,  a  west 
wind  blows  the  ship  into  Flushing,  in  Zealand.  And  we  will 
have  more  fullers'  earth  carried  from  Arundel  in  Sussex  to  Ports 
mouth  or  to  Chichester,  and  there  shipped  to  secure  the  clothiers 
in  the  north  of  England ;  and  when  that  ship  is  over  against 
Hull,  a  west  wind  shall  blow  her  over  to  the  Brill,  or  into  the 
Texel,  into  Holland.  And  these  two  ladings  of  earth,  with  a 
little  that  shall  be  brought  over  for  ballast  for  ships,  will  do  mis 
chief  enough,  for  trade  will  go  where  it  is  most  encouraged,  and 
where  the  merchant  and.  clothier  can  get  most  by  it. 

"  '  Draper. — True,  old  friend,  these  tricks  there  are,  and  there 
are  bad  men  enough  that  will  be  apt  enough  to  leave  the  land 
where  they  were  born  ;  but  let  us  see  to  help  these  matters,  for  if 
you  should  be  one  of  them,  all  the  poor  of  this  country  will  be 
bound  to  curse  you,  and  so  will  the  rich  too  ;  for  ive  have  had 
men  bad  enough  of  our  own  trade,  (but  it  will  not  become  me  to 
name  persons,)  who  have  provoked  many  clothiers  to  sell  their 
estates,  and  transport  themselves  into  the  Lower  Palatinate,  and 
other  parts  of  Germany,  and  there  set  up  the  clothing  trade, 
which  hath  already  spoiled  our  coarse  cloth  trade  eastward,  and 
tlw  trade  at  Hamborough  too  ;  for  if  their  trade  be  spoiled  in 
England,  they  must  try  if  they  can  make  it  out  somewhere  else, 
as  in  Ireland,  Holland,  and  Germany,  &c?  " 

The  folly  of  England  in  confining  herself  so  almost  exclusively 
•to  agriculture,  had  in  those  days  become  proverbial  on  the  conti 
nent.  "  The  stranger,"  as  they  said,  "buys  of  the  Englishman 
the  skin  of  the  fox  for  a  groat,  and  sells  him  the  tail  for  a  shil 
ling.""  iSeeing  that  the  system  then  existing  tended  towards  the 
cheapening  of  all  the  raw  materials  of  manufacture,  labor  included, 
Yarranton  had  little  difficulty  in  arriving  at  the  conclusion  that  a 
people  wholly  employed  in  tillage  must  remain  poor,  because  of 
the  waste  of  labor  consequent  upon  the  absence  of  that  combina 
tion  of  effort  Which  constitutes  commerce.  He,  therefore,  urged 
upon  his  countrymen  the  adoption  of  protective  measures,  by 
means  of  which  they  should,  at  once,  incur  the  expense  of  bring- 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL    CHANGES   OF    FORM.        403 

ing  the  machinery  and  the  skill  to  the  raw  materials,  and  thus  for 
ever  relieve  themselves  from  the  necessity  for  sending  the  bulky 
corn  and  wool  to  the  machinery  and  the  skill.  Were  this  done,  it 
would,  as  he  confidently  assured  them,  lead  to  such  improvements 
in  the  internal  communications,  and  in  commerce  generally,  that 
food  could  be  cheaply  supplied  to  all  parts  of  the  country  —  that 
rents  would  rise  —  that  capital  would  so  much  increase,  that  inte 
rest  would  greatly  fall  —  and  that  land  would  sell  more  readily  at 
thirty  years'  purchase  of  the  greater  rent  than  it  then  could  do 
at  sixteen  years'  purchase  of  the  lesser  one.  These  were  remark 
able  predictions,  but  they  were  made  by  a  man  who  seems  fully 
to  have  appreciated  the  advantages  resulting  from  that  rapidity 
of  circulation  which  constitutes  commerce  ;  and  their  entire  accu 
racy  was  verified  by  the  great  increase  in  the  value  of  both  land 
and  labor  which  subsequently  followed  their  emancipation  from 
that  heaviest  of  all  taxes  —  the  one  resulting  from  a  necessity  for 
effecting  changes  of  place,  and  constituting  the  great  bar  to 
progress. 

In  the  advice  thus  given  in  regard  to  a  great  question  in  social 
science,  this  remarkable  man  only  indicated  measures  similar  to 
those  we  now  see  to  be  everywhere  else  pursued.  When  the  che 
mist  desires  to  diminish  the  centralizing  force  by  means  of  which 
particles  of  matter  are  held  together  —  and  thus  to  produce  indi 
viduality,  and  the  consequent  power  of  association  among  those 
particles — he  does  it  by  means  of  the  establishment  of  a  stronger 
counter-attraction  in  another  direction  ;  as  when  he  immerses  zinc 
and  copper  in  acids,  and  thus  develops  electricity.  So,  too,  with 
the  occupant  of  our  Western  prairies,  who  always  fights  fire  with 
fire  —  establishing  local  centres  of  attraction  by  means  of  which 
gravitation  towards  the  great  central  fire  is  so  much  diminished, 
that  the  latter  quickly  ceases  to  exist.  Flanders,  Holland,  and 
Germany  had  already  attained  to  so  great  a  perfection  of  manu 
facture,  that  the  attraction  of  centralization  was  drawing  in  that 
direction  not  only  all  the  raw  materials  of  England,  but  many  of 
the  most  valuable  among  her  people ;  and  Yarranton  saw  clearly, 
that  the  latter  could  never  prosper  until  she  should  have  esta 
blished  a  system  of  counter-attraction  sufficient  not  only  to  enable 
her  to  retain  the  skill  she  already  had ;  but,  also,  to  attract  that 
which  she  required,  and  as  yet  had  not.  His  advice  was  taken ; 


404  CHAPTER   XVI.    §  4. 

and  from  that  time  the  statute-book  of  England  became,  from 
year  to  year,  more  and  more  filled  with  laws  having  for  their 
object  the  bringing  together  of  the  farmer  and  the  artisan,  with  a 
view  to  the  production  of  association  and  combination — and  there 
by  diminishing  the  necessity  for  exhausting  the  land  by  means  of 
the  exportation  of  its  products  in  their  rudest  state. 

§  4.  The  insular  position  of  England  had  given  her  security 
of  person,  and  of  property,  so  far  as  regarded  the  devastations  of 
war,  to  an  extent  unknown  in  any  part  of  Europe ;  and,  in  the 
days  of  Yarranton,  she  was  waiting  only  the  adoption  of  a  system 
that  should  enable  her  people  to  combine  together  for  the  develop 
ment  of  their  various  individualities.  To  effect  a  change  in  the 
movements  of  a  nation  requires,  however,  no  inconsiderable  time. 
The  knowledge  existed  on  the  continent,  but  it  was  not  to  be 
found  in  England.  In  Holland,  in  the  Netherlands,  and  in  the 
manufacturing  states  of  Germany,  wealth  abounded,  and  the  loan 
of  capital  could  be  obtained  at  the  rate  of  four  or  five  per  cent. ; 
whereas,  in  the  other  it  was  with  difficulty  obtained  for  employ 
ment  either  in  manufactures,  or  in  agriculture.  For  centuries,  the 
current  of  raw  materials  had  been  towards  the  continent,  but  now 
the  course  of  that  current  was  to  be  changed ;  and  to  accomplish 
this  was  a  work  requiring  serious  effort.  Commerce,  too,  in  Eng 
land  herself,  was  impeded  by-  numerous  restrictions,  many  of  which 
had  been  created  by  law,  while  others  had  resulted  from  the  anx 
iety  of  the  existing  manufacturers  to  discourage  domestic  compe 
tition  for  the  purchase  of  raw  products,  as  well  as  for  the  sale  of 
finished  commodities.  Then,  as  now,  they  desired  to  buy  cheaply 
and  sell  dearly  ;  and  the  more  they  could  prevent  the  extension  of 
manufactures  at  home,  the  cheaper  would  be  wool  and  the  dearer 
woul$  be  cloth. 

Time,  however,  brought  the  change,  but  not  until  the  English 
farmer  had  experienced  in  its  full  effect  the  loss  resulting  from  the 
necessity  for  depending  on  distant  markets  for  the  sale  of  the  raw 
products  of  the  earth.  In  the  long  and  warlike  period  that  closed 
with  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  the  power  of  wheat  to  command  money 
in  exchange  had  been  equal  to  43s.  6^.  per  quarter,  but  with  the 
return  of  peace,  (1713,)  the  price  fell  to  35s.,  and  thereafter  con 
tinued  gradually  to  decline  until,  in  the  ten  years  ending  1755, 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        405 

the  average  was  but  21s.  3d.;  or  less  than  half  of  what  before  had 
been  obtained  for  it.  The  product  exceeding  the  consumption, 
a  small  portion  needed  to  go  abroad ;  and  that  the  price  obtained 
for  the  surplus  fixed  that  of  the  whole  crop,  will  be  obvious  to  all 
who  remark  the  course  of  trade.  A  deficiency  to  the  extent  of 
even  a  hundred  thousand  bushels  raises  the  price  of  all  to  the 
level  of  that  at  which  that  small  supply  may  be  brought  from  the 
distant  market ;  while  an  excess  to  that  extent  reduces  the  whole 
to  the  level  of  the  price  at  which  this  trivial  quantity  must  be 
sold.  How  very  slight  was  the  excess  to  which  was  due  the 
great  reduction  that  had  taken  place,  is  shown  by  the  following 
figures : — 

Ten  years  ending  Price.  Export,  average. 

1725  £115«.  4a 124,000  quarters. 

1735  £1  155.  Id 176,000       " 

1745  £1  12«.  Id.  276,000      « 

1755  £1    Is.  2d.  446,000       " 

At  the  low  price  of  21s.  2d,  the  farmers  of  England  obtained 
a  market  abroad  for  less  than  four  millions  of  bushels  —  yielding 
scarcely  two  millions  of  dollars  a  year.  The  total  product  of 
wheat  in  Great  Britain  in  this  latter  period  must  have  been  more 
than  forty  millions  of  bushels ;  and  as  that  grain  then  entered 
little  into  consumption  as  compared  with  what  it  since  has  done, 
it  would  be,  perhaps,  fair  to  place  the  total  production  of  food 
as  being  the  equivalent  of  a  hundred  millions  of  bushels.  Of 
this,  about  four  per  cent,  constituted  the  surplus  thrown  upon 
the  then  regulating  markets  of  the  world,  depressing  the  prices 
there,  and  in  a  corresponding  degree  depressing  those  obtained 
for  the  whole  quantity  produced ;  to  the  injury  of  the  land  and 
labor  of  the  kingdom — to  that  of  the  artisan  —  and  to  that  of  all 
but  those  who  were  dependent  upon  fixed  incomes  for  their 
support. 

The  population  of  England  was  then  but  six  millions,  of  whom 
the  land-owners  —  then  numbering  nearly  two  hundred  thousand 
— and  their  families,  must  have  been  nearly  one-sixth,  or  a  million 
in  number.  Adding  to  them  the  laborers  in  husbandry,  we  have 
a  large  proportion  of  the  community  directly  dependent  upon  the 
results  of  agriculture.  The  mechanic,  however,  was  equally  inte- 


406  CHAPTER   XVI.    §4. 

rested  in  the  prosperity  of  the  farming  class,  because,  if  they  could 
sell  at  fair  prices,  they  could  buy  the  products  of  his  skill  and 
labor.  The  more  instant  the  demand  for  food  and  wool,  the 
greater  was  the  ability  of  the  agricultural  laborer  to  purchase 
cloth  —  and  that  of  the  proprietor  of  land  to  effect  improvement 
upon  his  property,  with  a  view  to  the  larger  production  of  both 
food  and  wool.  What  England  then  needed,  was  the  direct  mo 
tion  between  the  producer  and  the  consumer  at  home  —  commerce 
— by  help  of  which  her  farmers  might  be  emancipated  from  the 
dominion  of  trade.  In  default  of  this  motion,  the  latter  were 
obliged  to  accept  21s.  Zd.  per  quarter  for  the  whole  wheat  crop, 
and  corresponding  prices  for  all  other  descriptions  of  food — while 
exporting  but  four  millions  of  quarters,  and  importing,  in  the 
forms  of  cloth  and  iron,  probably  thrice  that  quantity. 

Progress  was,  however,  being  made.  With  the  middle  of  the 
century  it  came  to  be  discovered  that  iron  could  be  smelted  by 
help  of  mineral  coal ;  and  thenceforward  improvements  tending 
to  the  diversification  of  the  pursuits  of  men  became  numerous  and 
rapid.  The  mighty  power  of  steam  was  brought  to  supersede  the 
labors  of  the  human  hand — the  spinning-jenny  was  invented — and 
the  processes  required  for  the  manufacture  of  iron  continued  to  be 
improved  —  with  rapid  increase  in  the  circulation  of  labor  and  its 
products — in  the  economy  of  human  effort — in  the  accumulation  of 
wealth — and  in  the  power  of  further  progress.  The  farmer  being 
now  freed  from  his  dependence  on  the  distant  market,  the  price 
.of  grain  rapidly  rose — as  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  approxi 
mation  of  the  consumer  and  the  producer,  and  the  extension  of 
commerce.  The  power  of  wheat  to  command  money  in  exchange 
increased  in  the  ten  years  ending  in  1765  to  £1  19s.  3d.;  and  in 
those  ending  in  1775,  to  £2  11s.  3d.,  at  or  near  which  price 
it  remained  in  the  twenty  following  years.  Taking  the  average 
quantity,  of  food  of  all  descriptions,  consumed,  as  being  the  equi 
valent  of  twenty  bushels  of  wheat,  the  total  advance  in  the  return 
to  agricultural  labor,  consequent  upon  the  increase  in  the  rapidity 
of  circulation  resulting  from  the  creation  of  a  domestic  demand, 
could  thus  be  little  short  of  twenty  millions  of  pounds  sterling,  or 
a  hundred  millions  of  dollars.  Agriculture,  therefore,  advanced 
rapidly — creating  new  demands  for  labor,  and  enabling  the  laborer 


OF   MECHANICAL  AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        407 

to   claim  a  constantly  increasing  proportion  of  the  augmented 
quantity  of  things  produced.* 

§  5.  So  far  as  protection  had  been  resorted  to  with  a  view  to 
enable  the  farmers  to  call  to  their  aid  the  skill  and  the  machinery 
already  in  use  abroad,  and  to  obtain  command  of  the  various 
natural  forces  required  for  finishing  their  products  and  fitting  them 
for  consumption,  it  was  right.  It  relieved  them  from  the  heavy 
tax  of  transportation  ;  it  promoted  the  diversification  of  employ 
ments  and  the  development  of  intellect ;  and  it  tended  to  give  to 
society  that  natural  form  in  which  strength  and  beauty  are  most 
combined ;  and  therefore  is  it  that  we  see  in  the  movements  of 
the  years  immediately  preceding  the  breaking  out  of  the  wars  of 
the  French  Revolution,  so  strong  a  tendency  towards  a  reform 
in  the  constitution  of  Parliament  —  looking  towards  a  fairer 
representation  of  the  various  portions  of  which  the  society  was 
composed. 

Had  that  been  the  limit  of  the  movement  —  had  the  British 
policy  looked  solely  to  the  creation  of  a  domestic  market  for  the 
British  farmers  —  had  it  been  limited  to  their  own  emancipation 
from  dependence  on  the  casualties  of  distant  markets  —  had  Bri 
tish  statesmen  been  governed  by  that  great  fundamental  law  of 
Christianity,  which  requires  that  we  should  respect  the  rights  of 
others  as  carefully  as  we  desire  that  they  should  respect  our  own — 
all  would  have  been  well ;  and  the  doctrines  of  over-population — 
of  the  necessity  of  a  cheap  and  abundant  supply  of  labor  —  of  the 
expediency  of  expelling  a  kindred  nation,  with  a  view  to  supply 
its  place  by  "one  more  mixed,  more  docile,  and  more  service 
able,"  and  one  "which  can  submit  to  a  master"  f —  the  doctrines, 
in  short,  of  modern  political  economy,  would  have  remained 
unheard  of. 

Such,  however,  was  not  to  be  the  course  of  events.     Here,  as 

*  How  immense  was  the  effect  of  the  creation  of  a  home  market  in 
making  a  demand  for  land  and  labor,  is  shown  in  the  fact,  that  in  the 
reigns  of  Anne  and  George  I.  — 1702  to  1751  — the  whole  number  of  enclo 
sure  acts  obtained  was  18,  and  the  quantity  of  land  embraced  therein  but 
19,339  acres.  From  1751  to  1760,  the  number  was  226,  and  the  quantity 
of  land,  318,778  acres;  but  from  1760  to  1797,  the  former  rose  to  1532, 
and  the  latter  to  2,804,197  —  and  nearly  all  of  this  in  the  period  from  1771 
to  1791. 

f  London  Times,  on  the  Exodus  of  Ireland. 


408  CHAPTER   XVI.    §  5. 

everywhere  else  had  been  the  case,  there  arose  a  disposition  to 
monopolize  within  themselves  the  knowledge  by  means  of  which 
progress  had  been  obtained  ;  and  the  more  free  the  people  by 
whom  the  monopoly  was  desired,  the  more  unscrupulous  were 
certain  to  be  the  measures  by  aid  of  which  it  would  be  sought  to 
be  secured.  Had  it  been  otherwise,  it  would  have  been  in  oppo 
sition  to  all  the  lessons  taught  by  the  history  of  the  world ;  and 
should,  at  any 'future  time,  the  people  of  the  American  Union  be 
so  unfortunate  as  to  have  colonies,  and  they  should  then  fail  to 
prove  themselves  the  most  tyrannical  and  unscrupulous  of  masters, 
the  fact  would  constitute  the  most  remarkable  one  in  history.  It 
is,  therefore,  no  matter  of  surprise  that  to  the  freest  people  of 
Europe  we  owe  the  invention  of  the  system  described  in  former 
chapters  —  of  all  that  have  ever  existed,  the  most  oppressive  and 
exhausting. 

Nothing  comparable  with  it  in  its  capacity  for  evil  had  ever 
been  devised.  Invasions  by  bodies  of  armed  men  are  attended 
with  waste  of  property,  destruction  of  life,  and  temporary  suspen 
sion  of  commerce ;  but  with  the  return  of  peace  men  are  enabled 
again  to  combine  their  efforts,  and  at  the  close  of  a  few  short 
years  all  is  again  as  it  before  had  been.  Such,  however,  is  not 
the  case  with  invasions  looking  to  the  permanent  substitution  of 
trade  for  commerce ;  for  under  them,  the  power  of  association  dies 
away,  the  intellect  declines  in  its  development,  and  man  gradually 
loses  all  the  power  over  nature  that  he  before  had  gained.  He, 
himself,  then  diminishes  in  value,  while  that  of  the  commodities  re 
quired  for  his  support  as  regularly  increases — and  with  every  step 
in  that  direction  he  becomes  more  and  more  enslaved.  The  one 
is  a  sudden  shock  from  which,  with  care,  the  patient  may  recover  ; 
whereas,  the  other  consists  in  opening  the  veins  and  permitting 
the  life's  blood  slowly  to  ebb  away — rendering  recovery  from  day 
to  day  more  difficult,  and  closing  at  length  in  death.  Of  all  the 
countries  of  Europe,  none  has  so  frequently  been  overrun  —  none 
has  so  much  suffered  from  the  evils  of  war  —  as  Belgium;  and 
yet  it  has  at  all  times  ranked  among  those  most  prosperous.  Of 
all,  the  only  ones  that  have  for  centuries  been  almost  unprofaned 
by  a  hostile  foot,  are  the  British  islands  ;  yet,  there  was  invented 
the  Malthusian  theory,  and  in  one  of  them  is  found  the  great  trea 
sury  of  facts  by  means  of  which  it  is  attempted  to  be  supported. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OP   FORM.        409 

France  has  suffered  heavily  from  war ;  but  she  maintains  a  policy 
tending  to  promote  the  growth  of  commerce,  and  therefore  does 
she  advance  in  wealth  and  power.  Portugal,  except  during  the 
period  from  180T  to  1812,  has  been  in  a  great  degree  exempt 
from  war ;  yet  she  declines  in  wealth  and  strength,  because  wholly 
subject  to  the  exhaustive  influences  of  trade. 

§  6.  The  more  rapid  the  circulation  in  a  community,  the  greater 
is  the  power  at  command,  and  the  greater  the  tendency  towards 
increase  in  its  amount.  Whether  or  not  mankind  shall  profit  by 
its  acquisition  of  wealth  and  strength,  is  dependent  wholly  upon 
the  spirit  in  which  it  is  directed.  Wrongly  guided,  its  power  for 
evil  is  as  great  as  is  its  capacity  for  good ;  and  therefore  is  it 
that  we  everywhere  see  the  grievousness  of  the  tyranny  to  be  in 
the  direct  ratio  of  the  freedom  of  those  by  whom  the  power  is 
exercised.  A  people  tyrant  is  an  hydra-headed  monster,  com 
pared  with  which  an  autocratic  one  is  harmless.  The  knowledge 
of  the  Athenians  gave  them  power,  and  when  they  became  mas 
ters  of  the  lives  and  fortunes  of  a  thousand  subject  cities,  they 
proved  themselves  the  most  oppressive  of  taskmasters — every  man 
among  them  being  a  sovereign,  whose  revenue  was  to  be  increased 
by  measures  tending  to  the  exhaustion  of  his  subjects.  The  aris 
tocracies  of  Carthage,  and  of  Venice,  and  of  Genoa,  were  less  op 
pressive — the  number  of  masters  being  not  so  great.  The  despot 
ism  of  Charlemagne  was  light  by  comparison  with  that  of  the 
aristocracy  which  succeeded  to  it ;  as  was  that  of  Louis  XI. , 
when  compared  with  the  anarchy  of  Charles  VI.  and  VII., 
when  there  existed  no  law  but  that  of  force  —  when  kings  and 
dukes  had  recourse  to  assassination  with  a  view  to  free  themselves 
from  troublesome  competitors — and  when  robbery  and  murder,  in 
the  persons  of  men  like  La  Hire,  Dammartin,  and  Saintrailles, 
claimed  and  received  the  high  honors  of  the  state.  So  was  it 
with  the  despotism  of  Louis  XIII. ,  as  compared  with  the  anar 
chy  of  the  League  ;  and  so  with  that  of  Frederick  III.,  as  com 
pared  with  that  of  the  many  little  despots  who,  until  then,  had 
disposed  of  the  lives  and  fortunes  of  the  Danish  people.  So  is  it 
now  with  the  Russian  government,  as  compared  with  that  worst 
of  all  tyrannies  maintained  in  Poland  down  to  the  day  of  its 
partition. 

VOL.  I.—  27 


410  CHAPTER   XVI.    §  7. 

The  more  numerous  the  masters,  the  worse  for  both  master  and 
servant ;  in  proof  of  which  may  be  cited  the  fact  that  it  is  within 
the  limits  of  the  American  Union,  in  which  it  was  once  proclaimed 
that  "all  men  were  born  equal,"  that  the  assertion  has  first  been 
made  that  "free  society  has  proved  an  utter  failure  ;"  and  that 
the  natural  condition  of  a  large  portion  of  the  human  race  is  that 
of  slavery  —  involving  the  separation  of  husbands  from  wives, 
parents  from  children,  and  brothers  and  sisters  from  each  other. 
Such  being  the  case  even  here,  it  is  no  matter  of  surprise  that  to 
the  freest  people  of  Europe  we  owe  the  invention  of  the  most  op 
pressive  despotism  —  of  that  system  which,  more  than  any  that 
had  preceded  it,  looked  to  the  enslavement  of  man  —  that  one,  the 
supporters  of  which  now  publicly  proclaim  that  for  its  mainte 
nance  there  is  required  that  the  further  increase  of  population 
should  be  "in  the  most  serviceable  —  the  most  laborious  —  part," 
as  ' '  otherwise  it  will  not  be  sufficiently  at  the  control  of  capital 
and  skill  "  —  being  precisely  the  doctrine  taught  in  Carolina  by 
men  who  hold  that  "  slavery  is  the  corner-stone  of  our  insti 
tutions." 

§  7.  The  first  and  heaviest  tax  to  be  paid  by  man  and  land, 
and  the  great  obstacle  to  the  indulgence  of  the  desire  for  associa 
tion,  is,  as  has  been  shown,  that  resulting  from  a  necessity  for 
effecting  changes  of  place.  The  various  portions  of  the  earth  are 
differently  fitted  for  the  production  of  commodities  suited  to 
satisfy  the  wants,  or  gratify  the  tastes,  of  man  —  the  tropics  yield 
ing  rice,  cotton,  sugar,  and  various  fruits ;  while  it  is  to  the  tem 
perate  zones  we  must  look  for  corn,  and  to  the  arctic  ones  for 
furs  and  ice.  International  commerce  is,  therefore,  provided  for 
by  natural  laws  ;  but,  to  its  extension  there  is  opposed  the  great 
amount  of  effort  required  for  transporting  commodities  in  the  form 
in  which  they  are  yielded  by  the  earth  —  the  cotton  in  the  seed  — 
the  raw  wheat — or  the  cane  from  which  the  sugar  has  yet  to  be 
obtained.  Looking,  next,  to  the  various  divisions  of  the  earth's 
surface,  we  find,  in  every  little  state,  provisions  almost  precisely 
similar  —  one  part  of  England  being  best  fitted  for  yielding  cop 
per,  and  another  iron  ;  one  yielding  hay,  and  another  hops  ;  one 
producing  coal,  and  another  tin.  Here,  however,  as  in  the  case 
of  international  commerce,  we  are  met  by  the  difficulty  attendant 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL    CHANGES   OF    FORM.        411 

upon  the  necessity  for  transportation,  for  the  removal  of  which  we 
find  every  man  intent  upon  reducing,  as  far  as  possible,  the  bulk 
of  his  commodity — smelting  his  ore,  and  thus  converting  coal  and 
ore  into  copper  or  iron  —  grinding  his  wheat,  and  exporting  the 
finer  portions  in  the  form  of  flour  —  or  sawing  his  trees  into 
planks,  that  he  may  save  the  expense  of  transporting  those  por 
tions  that  are  of  little  use.  Elsewhere,  other  men  are  seen  com 
bining  quantities  of  corn  and  wool  into  cloth  ;  or  converting 
masses  of  coal  and  iron  into  steel ;  and  again  reducing  the  bulk 
by  converting  large  quantities  of  coal  and  of  steel  into  knives, 
forks,  and  other  instruments.  The  more  perfectly  they  succeed 
in  this  —  the  more  they  can  relieve  themselves  from  the  tax  of 
transportation — the  more  rapid  must  be  the  circulation  among 
themselves,  the  greater  their  power  to  improve  the  modes  of  trans 
portation,  so  far  as  it  is  yet  required ;  and  the  greater  must  be 
their  ability  to  maintain  commerce  with  distant  people. 

The  English  system  looked  to  the  diminution  of  the  bulk  of 
their  own  products ;  but  it  looked,  also,  to  the  prevention  of  any 
such  diminution  in  the  products  of  other  countries.  Directed  to 
the  extension  of  commerce  at  home,  it  was  directed,  also,  to  the 
annihilation  of  commerce  among  the  people  of  other  communities ; 
and  here  it  was,  as  has  been  already  said,  that  it  went  far  beyond 
any  other  that  had  ever  been  devised.  Irish  cloths  had  been  cele 
brated  in  the  days  when  England  exported  all  her  wool  and  im 
ported  all  her  cloth ;  and  yet  we  find  the  latter  availing  herself  of 
all  the  power  at  her  command  for  the  suppression  of  the  Irish 
woollen  manufacture,  and  for  compelling  all  the  wool  of  the  coun 
try  to  pass  through  the  mills  of  England,  before  the  Irish  people, 
themselves,  could  use  it.  Had  she  simply  prohibited  the  manufac 
ture — leaving  the  wool-growers  to  seek  a  market  where  they  would 
—  she  would  thus  greatly  have  augmented  the  cost  of  transporta 
tion,  while  diminishing  the  power  of  association  and  promoting  the 
exhaustion  of  the  land ;  but  to  this  was  added,  Pelion  upon  Ossa, 
a  prohibition  of  intercourse  with  the  world  except  through  the 
markets  of  England — and  such  was  the  policy  afterwards  adopted 
in  reference  to  all  the  colonies. 

Having  acquired  wealth  and  power,  it  was  deemed  desirable  to 
carry  out  this  policy  in  reference  to  independent  nations ;  and 
hence  the  passage,  in  the  period  from  1765  to  1799,  of  the  vari- 


412  CHAPTER    XVI.    §  8. 

ous  laws  prohibiting  the  export  of  machinery  and  artisans ;  and  the 
maintenance  of  those  prohibitions  until  1825.  Their  object  was, 
so  far  as  might  be  possible,  that  of  compelling  the  rude  produce 
of  the  earth  to  be  sent  to  England,  there  to  be  subjected  to  those 
mechanical  or  chemical  processes  required  for  bringing  it  to  the 
form  in  which  it  was  fitted  for  consumption.  Thence  it  might  go 
abroad  to  be  exchanged  for  sugar,  tea,  or  coifee ;  but  even  these 
articles  were,  as  far  as  possible,  to  be  required  to  pass  through 
English  ports,  and  by  means  of  English  ships.  So  oppressive  a 
system  as  this  had  never  before  even  been  imagined.  It  looked 
to  making  every  country  outside  of  England  a  purely  agricultural 
one  ;  but,  were  all  the  communities  of  the  world  reduced  to  that 
condition,  each  and  every  of  them,  and  each  and  every  of  its  parts, 
would  be  compelled  to  produce  all  the  commodities  required  for 
consumption,  as  commerce  there  could  be  little  or  none,  abroad 
or  at  home.  To  enable  distant  commerce  to  exist,  the  bulk  of 
commodities  must  be  reduced,  and  in  the  effort  to  accomplish  that 
object,  diversity  of  employment  is  necessarily  produced.  That 
diversity  had  arisen  in  England,  and  all  her  efforts  were  now 
given  to  preventing  its  appearance  in  any  other  part  of  the  world 
—  and  thus  to  establish  the  entire  supremacy  of  the  trader  and 
transporter  over  the  producer. 

§  8.  Commerce  grows  with  the  diminution  in  the  necessity  for 
transportation.  The  more  the  latter  can  be  dispensed  with,  the  more 
continuous  and  rapid  becomes  the  societary  movement ;  the  more 
is  muscular  and  mental  effort  economized ;  the  more  rapidly  does 
the  reappearance  of  capital  follow  its  consumption ;  the  greater  is 
the  power  of  accumulation ;  the  greater  the  utility  of  all  the  mate 
rials  of  which  the  earth  is  composed ;  the  less  the  value  of  the  com 
modities  required  for  the  use  of  man ;  the  greater  the  value  of  man ; 
and  the  more  rapid  is  the  development  of  individuality  and  the 
growth  of  freedom. 

That  such  is  the  case  is  everywhere  felt,  and  therefore  it  is  that 
the  men  who  cultivate  the  earth  so  much  rejoice  in  having  the 
workers  in  iron  and  cloth  —  consumers  of  food  and  wool  —  come 
to  occupy  places  in  their  neighborhood.  To  prevent  this,  and  to 
produce  a  constantly  intermitted  motion  —  one  that  should  cause 
a  long  interval  between  production  and  consumption  —  was  the 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL  CHANGES   OF   FORM.        413 

object  of  the  British  system.  It  sought  everywhere  to  cause  the 
wool  and  the  cotton  to  travel  thousands  of  miles  in  quest  of  the 
little  spindle  and  the  loom  ;  and  that,  too,  under  the  most  disad 
vantageous  circumstances  —  the  bulk  of  all  the  commodities  being 
preserved  at  its  largest,  and  the  aperture  through  which  they  were 
to  pass  contracted  to  the  smallest  size,  as  here  is  represented  : — 


Cotton,  corn,  sugar,  wool, 
and  other  raw  mate 
rials  of  the  world. 


and  mills. 


The  quantity  seeking  to  pass  being  great,  and  the  aperture 
being  narrow,  it  followed,  necessarily,  that  the  friction  was 
immense,  and  that  the  greater  part  of  the  raw  produce  disap 
peared  under  the  process  to  which  it  thus  was  subjected.  The 
larger  the  crop,  the  greater  was  the  mass  to  be  transported, 
the  higher  became  the  freights,  and  the  larger  the  charges  for 
storage  and  insurance ;  but  the  smaller  became  the  prices.  It 
hence  resulted  —  as  a  natural  consequence  of  this  most  unnatural 
process  —  that  the  farmer  and  planter  were  forced  to  deprecate 
the  extension  of  production,  for  to  them  it  was  fraught  with  ruin. 
Small  crops  —  giving  low  freights,  small  charges  for  storage,  and 
high  prices  in  the  distant  market  —  were  profitable ;  whereas 
large  ones  were  injurious  to  all  engaged  in  the  development  of 
the  resources  of  the  earth. 

Until  now,  increase  of  population  had  been  regarded  as  an  ele 
ment  of  strength,  but  as  the  British  system  came  fairly  into  opera 
tion  the  modes  of  thought  were  changed,  and  growth  of  numbers 
came  to  be  regarded  as  an  evidence  of  weakness,  and  not  of 
strength.  How  far  an  unsound  and  unjust  system  of  policy 
tended  to  produce  this  change  of  doctrine,  will  be  examined  in 
another  chapter. 


414  CHATTER   XVH.    §  1, 


CHAPTER    XYII. 

THE    SAME   SUBJECT  CONTINUED. 

§  1.  THE  Wealth  of  Nations  was  first  published  in  1176  ;  and 
its  chief  object  was  the  enforcement  upon  its  author's  countrymen 
of  the  consideration  of  the  great  truth  that  trade  and  manufactures 
were  useful  so  far —  and  so  far  only  —  as  they  contributed  to  the 
advancement  of  agriculture,  to  the  development  of  the  treasures 
of  the  earth,  and  to  the  promotion  of  commerce.  The  tendency 
of  the  colonial  system  was,  as  he  thought,  decidedly  adverse  to 
the  production  of  any  of  these  effects,  as — by  preventing  the  colo 
nists  from  working  in  the  "more  refined  manufactures,"  and 
limiting  them  to  those  "coarse  and  household"  ones  usually  car 
ried  on  by  a  private  family  "  for  its  own  use" — it  tended,  certainly, 
to  augment  the  quantity  of  raw  materials  sent  to  Britain — thereby 
discouraging  British  agriculture.  That  effect  was,  however,  pre 
cisely  the  one  sought  by  the  trader  and  the  manufacturer  to  be 
accomplished  —  the  cheaper  the  raw  material  abroad,  the  higher 
being  the  freights  of  the  one,  and  the  profits  of  the  other. 

So  far  as  the  system  tended  to  create  a  market  for  food,  the 
British  farmer  profited  ;  but,  as  regarded  all  other  raw  products, 
he  was  a  heavy  sufferer  under  what  Dr.  Smith  denominated  "the 
mean  rapacity,  the  monopolizing  spirit  of  merchants  and  manu 
facturers" — the  class  of  men  who  thought  that  "England's  trea 
sure"  was  to  be  found  "in  foreign  trade"  alone.  That  that 
trade  might  prosper,  they  desired  cheap  raw  material ;  and,  that 
it  might  be  cheapened,  they  sought  to  promote  competition  for 
the  sale  on  the  soil  of  England  of  all  the  rude  products  of  other 
lands,  as  well  as  of  the  half-converted  ones  required  for  any  of 
the  processes  of  manufacture.  "By  encouraging  the  importation 
of  cotton  yarn,"  says  Dr.  Smith,  "and  thereby  bringing  it  into 
competition  with  that  which  is  made  by  our  own  people,  they  en 
deavor  to  buy  the  work  of  the  poor  spinners  as  cheap  as  possible. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        415 

They  are,"  he  continues,  "as  intent  to  keep  down  the  wages  of 
their  own  weavers,  as  the  earnings  of  the  poor  spinners;  and  it  is 
by  no  means  for  the  benefit  of  the  workman  that  they  endeavor  to 
raise  the  price  of  the  complete  work,  or  to  lower  that  of  the  rude 
materials.  It  is  the  industry  of  the  rich  and  powerful  that  is 
principally  encouraged  by  our  mercantile  system.  That  which  is 
carried  on  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor  and  indigent  is  too  often 
either  neglected  or  oppressed."* 

Looking,  thus,  almost  exclusively  to  trade,  the  system  tended, 
as  he  saw,  unnaturally  to  increase  the  proportion  of  the  British 
population  employed  in  the  work  of  exchange  and  transportation 
—  thereby  raising  up  a  nation  of  mere  shopkeepers,  and  breaking 
"that  natural  balance  which  would  otherwise  have  taken  place 
among  the  different  branches  of  British  industry."  "  Instead  of 
running  in  a  number  of  small  channels,  it  had  been  taught  to  run 
principally  in  one  channel"  —  thereby  rendering  "industry  and 
commerce  less  secure,"  and  "the  body  politic  less  healthful  than 
it  otherwise  would  have  been."  "  In  her  present  condition,"  as 
he  thought,  "  Great  Britain  resembled  one  of  those  unwholesome 
bodies  in  which  some  of  the  vital  parts  are  overgrown,  and  which, 
upon  that  account,  are  liable  to  many  dangerous  disorders,  scarce 
incident  to  those  in  which  all  the  parts  are  more  properly  propor 
tioned."  The  dangers  attendant  upon  this  exclusive  devotion  to 
the  supposed  interests  of  trade,  being  clearly  obvious  to  him,  he 
cautioned  his  countrymen  that  "  a  small  stop  in  that  great  blood 
vessel,  which  has  been  artificially  swelled  beyond  its  natural 
dimensions,  and  through  which  an  unnatural  proportion  of  the 
industry  and  commerce  of  the  country  has  been  forced  to  circu 
late,  is  very  likely  to  bring  on  the  most  dangerous  disorders  upon 
the  whole  body  politic."  *  *  *  "  The  blood,  of 
which  the  circulation  is  stopped  in  some  of  the  smaller  vessels, 
easily  disgorges  itself  into  the  greater,  without  occasioning  any 
dangerous  disorder ;  but,  when  it  is  stopped  in  any  of  the  greater 
vessels,  convulsions,  apoplexy,  or  death,  are  the  immediate  and 
unavoidable  consequences.  If  but  one  of  those  overgrown  manu 
factures  which,  by  means  either  of  bounties  or  of  the  monopoly  of 
the  home  and  colony  markets,  have  been  artificially  raised  up 
to  any  unnatural  height,  finds  some  small  stop  or  interruption  in 
*  Wealth  of  Nations,  book  4,  chap.  viii. 


416  CHAPTER   XVII.    §  2. 

its  employment,  it  frequently  occasions  a  mutiny  and  disorder 
alarming  to  government,  and  embarrassing  even  to  the  delibera 
tions  of  the  legislature.  How  great,  therefore,  would,"  as  he 
thought,  "be  the  disorder  and  confusion  which  must  necessarily 
be  occasioned  by  a  sudden  and  entire  stop  in  the  employment  of 
so  great  a  proportion  of  our  principal  manufacturers  1"* 

Great  as  were  the  dangers  even  then  so  evident  as  resulting 
from  an  unnatural  increase  in  the  proportion  of  the  population 
engaged  in  the  works  of  trade  and  transportation,  the  people  of 
England  had  at  that  time  but  entered  upon  the  effort  to  reduce 
the  world  at  large  under  the  system  which  so  long  previously  had 
existed  in  the  colonies.  The  interdiction  of  the  emigration  of 
artisans  was  then  but  ten  years  old ;  and  the  British  power  was 
then  but  beginning  to  be  established  in  Hindostan.  The  fifth  year 
following  the  publication  of  the  work  of  Dr.  Smith  witnessed  the 
prohibition  of  the  export  of  silk  and  woollen  machinery  ;  and  be 
fore  the  close  of  the  century  the  policy  had  been  perfected  by  the 
extension  of  the  prohibition  to  all  other  descriptions  of  machinery, 
as  well  as  to  artisans  by  whom  it  might  be  made,  and  to  colliers. 

§  2.  From  1750,  when  corn  had  been  21s.  3d.  per  quarter,  to 
1790,  the  population  had  increased  about  forty  per  cent.,  or  from 
six,  to  eight  and  a  half  millions  ;  but  the  supply  of  food  had 
grown  at  a  rate  still  more  rapid  —  the  production  of  the  later 
years  of  the  period  having  been  at  least  one-half  greater  than  that 
of  the  previous  ones.  The  price,  nevertheless,  had  more  than 
doubled,  as  has  been  already  shown ;  and  thus  had  the  farmer 
profited  by  his  emancipation  from  the  necessity  for  seeking  a  mar 
ket  in  distant  countries.  Corn  was  then  higher  at  home  than 
abroad,  as  a  consequence  of  which  there  had  arisen  a  commerce 
of  importation,  for  the  prevention  of  which,  and  for  thus  securing 
themselves  against  the  cheapening  of  the  raw  materials  of  life, 
the  agricultural  interest  procured,  in  1791,  the  passage  of  a  law 
limiting  the  price  at  which  it  might  be  imported. 

During  all  this  period  the  tendency  had  been  towards  an  in 
crease  in  the  proportion  of  the  population  engaged  in  consuming 
food,  whether  as  artisans,  soldiers,  traders,  or  transporters.  The 
system  denounced  by  Dr.  Smith  was  being,  as  the  reader  has  seen, 
*  Wealth  of  Nations,  book  4,  chap.  vii. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        417 

from  year  to  year,  more  fully  carried  out.  For  almost  half  a  cen 
tury,  India  had  been  devastated  by  contending  French  and  Eng 
lish  armies,  engaged  in  extending  the  dominion  of  trade  at  the 
expense  of  commerce.  Trade  had  stirred  up  dissensions  between 
the  mother  country  and  her  American  colonies,  and  had  thus 
produced  the  war  of  1776.  The  class  living  by  appropriation, 
trade,  and  transportation,  had  increased  in  numbers  and  in  power, 
but  it  was  reserved  for  the  war  of  1793 — a  war  largely  due  to  the 
thirst  for  "ships,  colonies,  and  commerce" — to  see  it  attain  to 
full  dimensions.  The  demand  for  men  and  money  for  warlike 
purposes  then  limited  the  power  to  apply  labor,  or  capital,  to  the 
improvement  of  the  land,  and  greatly^  diminished  the  demand  for 
the  services  of  the  laborer.  Consumers  increasing  in  number, 
while  producers  remained  stationary,  the  price  of  food  advanced, 
while  that  of  labor  fell — the  effects  of  which  were  speedily  seen  in 
the  rapid  growth  of  the  almshouse  population. 

Pauperism  prevailed  to  an  extent  that  before  had  been  un 
known  ;  and  then  it  was  that  Mr.  Malthus  furnished  the  world 
with  the  "Principles  of  Population,''1  by  help  of  which,  as  he  told 
his  readers,  they  might  understand  the  causes  of  ' '  that  poverty 
and  misery  observable  among  the  lower  classes  of  people  in  every 
nation;"  and  of  "the  repeated  failures  in  the  efforts  of  the  higher 
classes  to  relieve  them."  Dr.  Smith  had  seen  that  the  policy 
based  upon  cheap  labor  and  cheap  raw  materials  was  itself  the 
work  of  those  "higher  classes;"  and  upon  them  he  had  urged  the 
abandonment  of  a  system  that,  as  he  saw,  looked  to  the  enslave 
ment  of  the  people,  and  the  weakening  of  the  community.  Mr. 
Malthus,  on  the  contrary,  found  the  cause  of  slavery  in  a  great 
law  of  God,  by  means  of  which  he  relieved  those  "  classes"  from 
all  responsibility  for  "that  poverty  and  misery"  which  they  had 
so  unsuccessfully  labored  to  "relieve"  ;  and  thus  enabled  them  to 
close  their  purses,  and  even  their  hearts,  against  the  commonest 
dictates  of  charity,  by  the  reflection  that  if  they  should  in  any 
manner  "stand  between  the  error  and  its  consequences"  —  if  they 
should  in  any  manner  "intercept  the  penalty"  affixed  to  the  pro 
creation  of  their  species  by  those  who  had  not  already  accumu 
lated  the  means  of  support  and  education  for  their  children  — 
which  penalty  is  poverty,  wretchedness,  and  death  —  they  would 


418  CHAPTER   XVII.    §  3. 

"perpetuate  the  sin,"*  and  become  themselves  participants  in 
crime  !     In  these  two  sentences  may  be  found  the  real  differences 
between  the  political  economy  of  Adam  Smith  and  that  modern 
one  since  so  generally  received.     The  former  looks  to  the  exten 
sion  of  commerce — to  the  development  of  mind — and  to  the  aug 
mentation  of  the  powers,  and  of  the  freedom  of  man ;  the  latter  to 
the  extension  of  the  dominion  of  trade — to  the  limitation  of  the 
mass  of  mankind  to  the  works  of  cultivation  and  transportation — 
and  to  the  ultimate  enslavement  of  man  by  nature,  and  by  his  fel 
low-man. 

§  3.  The  mercantile  system,  so  much  reprobated  by  Dr.  Smith, 
had  for  its  object  the  cheapening  of  all  the  raw  material  of  manu 
facture  —  wool,  cotton,  food,  and  labor.  Thus  far  it  had,  as  he 
saw,  been  productive  of  most  injurious  effects — having  increased 
the  dependence  on  machinery  of  trade  and  transportation  —  hav 
ing  produced  a  belief  that  the  more  widely  men  were  separated 
from  each  other,  and  the  greater  the  distance  to  be  travelled  over, 
the  greater  was  the  benefit  to  be  derived  from  commerce — having 
fostered  the  warlike  tendencies  of  the  people  —  having  caused  an 
improper  division  of  the  population  —  and  having  tended  greatly 
to  promote  the  creation  of  large  fortunes  at  the  expense  of  those 
who  had  labor  alone  to  sell.  Such,  as  he  told  his  countrymen, 
were  the  necessary  consequences  of  the  system ;  but  it  needed  a 
further  experience  of  twenty  years  for  proving  that  such  was  cer 
tainly  the  case,  and  for  giving  occasion  to  the  extraordinary  dis 
covery  that  although  the  demand  for  labor  had  become  more 
steady  as  population  had  increased,  and  as  men  had  more  and 
more,  from  the  days  of  the  Plantagenets  to  those  of  George  III., 
acquired  wealth,  and  with  its  acquisition  had  obtained  increased 
facility  of  combination  ;  now,  having  in  the  last  half  century  ac 
quired  an  extraordinary  increase  of  power — having  began  to  util 
ize  the  great  deposits  of  coal,  and  of  iron  and  copper  ores — having 
learned  to  command  the  wonderful  force  of  steam — having  learned 
to  apply  it  to  the  conversion  of  wool  into  cloth — having  obtained 
a  great  increase  of  wealth — having  greatly  facilitated  the  develop 
ment  of  the  latent  faculties  of  man,  and  the  latent  powers  of  the 
earth  —  and  having  thus  produced  a  vast  increase  in  the  move- 

*  Edinburgh  Review,  October,  1849:  article,  Unsound  Social  Philosophy. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FOKM.        419 

ment  of  society  —  the  demand  for  labor  must  become  more  un 
steady,  and  pauperism  must  increase,  in  virtue  of  a  great  natural 
law,  by  which  it  had  been  provided  that  the  more  efficient  the 
machinery  of  cultivation,  the  less  must  be  the  return  to  the  labor 
employed  in  developing  the  resources  of  the  earth. 

This  was  a  remarkable  discovery,  certainly ;  but,  happily,  it 
was  a  discovery  of  a  fact  that  never  had  existed,  and  never  can 
exist.  The  treasures  of  nature  are  boundless  in  extent ;  and  they 
wait  only  for  man  to  claim  them.  Unfortunately,  however,  the 
theory  was  precisely  the  one  that  was  needed  for  the  prevention 
of  the  adoption  of  any  of  the  remedial  measures  proposed  by 
Adam  Smith.  Proving,  as  it  professed  to  do,  that  pauperism 
existed  in  obedience  to  the  laws  of  God — that  the  natural  rate  of 
wages  "  was  just  so  much  as,"  and  no  more  than,  "was  necessary 
to  enable  the  laborers,  one  with  another,  to  subsist  and  perpetuate 
their  race,  without  increase  or  diminution"  —  that  inequality  of 
condition  existed  in  obedience  to  divine  laws  —  that  the  rich  and 
powerful  had  therefore  only  rights  to  exercise,  and  not  duties  to 
perform  —  it  proved,  too,  that  they  could  safely  and  conscien 
tiously  "eat,  drink,  and  make  merry,"  though  surrounded  by 
poverty,  wretchedness,  disease,  and  death  —  solacing  themselves 
with  the  reflection  that  the  poor  had  their  fate  in  their  own  hands, 
and  that  if  they  failed  to  exercise  the  "moral  restraint"  which 
should  lead  to  abstinence  from  that  regular  association  of  the 
sexes  which  causes  reproduction  of  the  species,  the  fault  was 
their  own,  and  upon  them  must  justly  fall  the  penalty  of  trans 
gression. 

§  4.  The  system  which  looked  exclusively  to  foreign  trade  was, 
therefore,  not  only  maintained  in  full,  but  with  each  successive 
year  was  more  extensively  carried  out.  From  the  days  of  Mr. 
Malthus  to  our  own,  the  temple  of  Janus  has  rarely,  even  if  ever, 
been  closed,  in  testimony  of  the  existence  of  peace  throughout  the 
British  empire.  The  war  in  which  Britain  was  then  engaged  was 
followed  by  one  with  this  country,  since  the  close  of  which  there 
have  been  wars  for  the  annexation  of  Scinde  and  Affghanistan — for 
the  conquest  of  Ava  and  the  Punjab — for  the  maintenance  of  the 
opium  trade  —  for  the  extension  of  power  in  South  Africa  —  for 
the  development  of  new  avenues  for  trade  throughout  the  Turkish 


420  CHAPTER    XVII.    §4. 

Empire  —  and  others  —  all  looking  to  the  one  great  object  of 
cheapening  the  raw  products  of  the  earth,  and  thereby  cheapening 
the  labors  of  the  men  by  whom  the  earth  was  being  tilled. 

For  the  accomplishment  of  that  object,  as  the  reader  has  seen, 
the  union  with  Ireland  was  perfected,  and  her  manufactures  were 
annihilated.  For  its  accomplishment,  the  people  of  India  were  re 
quired  to  receive  the  cotton  goods  of  England  free  of  duty,  while 
deprived  of  the  power  to  purchase  more  efficient  machinery  from 
abroad,  and  taxed  to  an  unheard-of  extent  for  the  use  of  that 
which  they  already  possessed.  For  its  accomplishment,  Gibraltar 
has  been  maintained  as  a  smuggling  depot  for  Spain ;  while  Heli 
goland,  the  Ionian  Islands,  and  numerous  other  colonies,  have 
been  used  for  smuggling  goods  into  Germany,  the  United  States, 
and  other  countries  — the  smuggler  being  now  regarded  as  "the 
great  reformer  of  the  age."  For  its  accomplishment,  it  has  been 
required  that  there  should  be  combinations  among  masters  for 
keeping  down  the  price  of  labor  —  for  limiting  the  hours  in  which 
machinery  should  be  run,  with  a  view  to  preventing  the  rise  of 
raw  materials  —  and  for  discouraging  the  growth  of  manufactures 
in  other  countries.  That  all  of  these  are  acts  of  war,  and  that 
they  are  properly  so  to  be  regarded,  will  be  seen  on  a  perusal  of 
the  following  extract  from  an  official  document  recently  published 
by  order  of  the  House  of  Commons  : — * 

"  The  laboring  classes  generally,  in  the  manufacturing  districts 
of  this  country,  and  especially  in  the  iron  and  coal  districts,  are 
very  little  aware  of  the  extent  to  which  they  are  often  indebted 
for  their  being  employed  at  all  to  the  immense  losses  which  their 
employers  voluntarily  incur  in  bad  times,  in  order  to  destroy 
foreign  competition,  and  to  gain  and  keep  possession  of  foreign 
markets.  Authentic  instances  are  well  known  of  employers  hav 
ing  in  such  times  carried  on  their  works  at  a  loss  amounting  in 
the  aggregate  to  three  or  four  hundred  thousand  pounds  in  the 
course  of  three  or  four  years.  If  the  efforts  of  those  who  encou 
rage  the  combinations  to  restrict  the  amount  of  labor  and  to  pro 
duce  strikes  were  to  be  successful  for  any  length  of  time,  the  great 
accumulations  of  capital  could  no  longer  be  made  which  enable  a 
few  of  the  most  wealthy  capitalists  to  overwhelm  all  foreign 

*  Report  of  the  Commissioner  appointed  to  Examine  into  the  Slate  of  the 
Population  of  the  Mining  Districts.  1854. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        421 

competition  in  times  of  great  depression,  and  thus  to  clear  the 
way  for  the  whole  trade  to  step  in  when  prices  revive,  and  to 
carry  on  a  great  business  before  foreign  capital  can  again  accu 
mulate  to  such  an  extent  as  to  be  able  to  establish  a  competition 
in  prices  with  any  chance  of  success.  The  large  capitals  of  this 
country  are  the  great  instrumeiits  of  warfare  (if  the  expression 
may  be  allowed)  against  the  competing  capital  of  foreign  coun 
tries,  and  are  the  most  essential  instruments  now  remaining  by 
which  our  manufacturing  supremacy  can  be  maintained  j  the  other 
elements  —  cheap  labor,  abundance  of  raw  materials,  means  of 
communication,  and  skilled  labor  —  being  rapidly  in  process  of 
being  equalized." 

The  system  here  described  is  vefy  properly  characterized  as 
"  warfare  ;"  and  we  may  properly  inquire  for  what  purposes,  and 
against  whom,  it  is  waged.  It  is  a  war,  as  the  reader  sees,  for 
cheapening  labor  and  raw  materials  —  being  precisely  the  objects 
sought  to  be  accomplished  by  the  "Mercantile  System,",  whose 
error  was  so  well  exposed  in  the  Wealth  of  Nations.  It  is  a  war 
for  compelling  the  people  of  other  lands  to  confine  themselves  to 
agriculture — for  preventing  the  diversification  of  employments  in 
other  countries  —  for  retarding  the  development  of  intellect  —  for 
palsying  every  movement  elsewhere  looking  to  the  utilization  of 
the  metallic  treasures  of  the  earth  —  for  increasing  the  difficulty 
of  obtaining  iron  —  for  diminishing  the  demand  for  labor  —  for 
producing  pauperism  —  for  doing  all  these  things  at  home  and 
abroad  —  and  for  thus  bringing  about  the  state  of  things  whose 
approach  was  predicted  by  Adam  Smith. 

To  measures  such  as  here  described  was  due  the  closing  of  all 
the  manufactories  of  India,  followed  by  the  exportation  of  cotton 
to  England,  there  to  compete  with  the  products  of  Carolina  and 
Alabama.  The  more  perfectly  the  system  can  be  carried  out — the 
more  the  manufacture  can  be  restricted  to  England — the  cheaper 
will  be  the  raw  materials  ;  but  the  greater  will  be  the  export  of 
cheap  labor  to  Texas  and  to  the  Mauritius,  there  to  raise  more 
cotton,  sugar,  and  other  raw  materials ;  and  thence  to  compete 
with  each  other  for  the  reduction  of  prices,  and  for  the  more  com 
plete  enslavement  of  the  laborers  of  all  those  countries. 

§  5.  It  is  claimed  that  the  warfare  above  described  is  beneficial 


422  CHAPTER   XVII.    §5. 

to  the  people  of  England.  Were  that  so,  it  would  establish  the 
lamentable  fact  that  war  could  be  profitable  —  that  nations  and 
individuals  could  permanently  thrive  by  the  commission  of  acts 
of  injustice — and  that,  such  being  the  divine  law,  communities  were 
warranted  in  so  exercising  their  power  as  to  prevent  the  growth 
of  civilization  where  it  did  not  as  yet  exist,  and  to  annihilate  it 
where  it  did.  Happily,  there  exists  no  such  law.  Nations  can 
permanently  prosper  only  as  they  obey  the  golden  rule  of  Chris 
tianity  ;  and  when  they  fail  to  do  so,  Nemesis  never  fails  to  claim 
her  rights.  That  she  has  done  so  on  this  occasion,  and  that  the 
pauperism  of  England  is  due  to  failure  in  this  respect,  the  reader 
may,  perhaps,  be  satisfied  after  a  brief  examination  of  the  effect 
of  the  system  upon  her  own  fitborers,  whether  engaged  in  the  work 
of  the  factory,  or  of  the  field. 

The  manufactures  of  Ireland  gradually  declined  from  the  date 
of  the  Union  in  1801.  As  they  ceased  to  demand  the  services  of 
men,  women,  and  children,  the  latter  were  forced  to  seek  employ 
ment  in  the  field ;  and  thus  was  the  production  of  food  increased, 
while  the  home  consumption  diminished.  The  exports,  conse 
quently,  rose  from  300,000  quarters  in  the  early  years  of  the  cen 
tury,  to  2,500,000  thirty  years  later — causing  the  price  in  England 
to  fall  from  an  average  of  £4  per  quarter  in  the  years  from  1816 
to  1820,  to  one  of  £2  12s  in  those  from  1821  to  1835.  At  first 
sight,  this  reduction  in  the  price  of  food  might  seem  to  be  an 
advantage,  but,  unfortunately  and  necessarily,  it  was  accompanied 
by  still  greater  cheapness  of  labor — it  being  one  of  the  character 
istics  of  the  system  which  looks  to  the  cheapening  of  raw  materials 
that  it  lessens  the  demand  for  human  service.  At  the  moment  when 
corn  was  so  cheap,  millions  of  Irish  people  were  totally  idle,  and 
seeking  anxiously,  yet  vainly,  for  employment  at  sixpence  a  day, 
without  clothing,  or  even  food.  As  a  consequence  of  this,  Great 
Britain  was,  says  one  of  the  British  journals,*  "flooded  with 
crowds  of  half-clad,  half-civilized  Celts,  reducing  the  standard  of 
living"  among  English  laborers,  and  furnishing  that  "abundant 
supply  of  cheap  labor"  to  which,  says  the  Times,  Britain  is  in 
debted  for  all  her  "great  works."  Man  had,  to  quote  again  the 
words  of  that  journal,  "become  a  drug,  and  population  a  nui 
sance;"  and  had  so  become,  because  of  the  annihilation  of  com- 
*  North  British  Review,  November,  1852. 


OP   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        423 

merce  among  the  Irish  people.  Labor,  another  of  the  raw  mate 
rials  of  manufacture,  having,  therefore,  fallen  faster  than  food,  the 
pauperism  of  England  had  so  rapidly  increased  that  no  less  than 
one-ninth  of  the  population  had  become  recipients  of  aid  from  the 
public  purse ;  and  the  poor-tax  had  risen  in  thirty  years  from  five 
to  nearly  nine  millions  of  pounds,  while  the  price  of  wheat  had 
fallen  nearly  forty  per  cent.  Food  was  low,  but  wages  were  so 
very  low  that  the  laborer  could  not  purchase.  Labor  was  low, 
but  food  was  so  cheap  that  the  farmer  was  unable  to  pay  rent  and 
wages.  Thus  did  both  the  land-owner  and  the  laborer  of  England 
suffer  from  the  want  of  that  circulation  of  men  and  things  through 
out  Ireland  which  would  have  resulted  from  the  establishment  in 
the  latter  of  a  system  under  which  every  man  would  have  been 
enabled  to  sell  his  own  labor,  and  to  become  a  purchaser  of  that 
of  his  neighbors,  their  wives  and  children — a  system  under  which 
Irish  commerce  could  have  grown. 

.  The  manufacturing  population,  however,  it  might  be  supposed, 
had  gained  by  the  cheaper  food.  On  the  contrary,  they  suffered, 
because  the  decline  of  wages  in  other  pursuits  was  accompanied 
by  a  diminution  in  the  power  to  purchase  cloth  —  and  with  the 
decline  in  the  price  of  food,  the  farmer  had  become  unable  to  pur 
chase  machinery  of  cultivation.  All  thus  suffered  alike.  The 
destruction  of  the  home  market  for  food  and  labor  in  Ireland, 
consequent  upon  the  annihilation  of  her  commerce,  had  produced 
the  same  effect  in  England. — The  great  manufacturer  may,  per 
haps,  have  profited.  On  the  contrary,  his  market  in  England 
had  been  lessened,  while  that  of  Ireland  had  almost  totally  failed 
— and  thus  had  a  nation  been  almost  annihilated  with  no  profit  to 
those  who  had  done  the  work ;  but,  with  the  most  serious  loss  to 
all,  resulting  from  the  fact  that  the  standard  of  living  and  of  mo 
rals  had  been  greatly  reduced  ;  that  the  disease  of  over-popula 
tion  had  far  more  widely  spread  ;  and  that  the  gulf  dividing  the 
higher  and  lower  classes  of  English  society  had  greatly  widened. 
Nowhere  in  the  world  is  there  to  be  found  stronger  evidence  of 
the  advantage  to  be  gained  in  carrying  out,  in  the  management 
of  public  affairs,  the  strictest  observance  of  the  great  fundamental 
law  of  Christianity,  than  is  to  be  found  in  the  history  of  the  con 
nection  between  England  and  Ireland  in  the  present  century. 


424  CHAPTER  XVII.    §  6. 

§  6.  The  power  to  purchase  the  labor  of  others  is  dependent 
altogether  upon  the  existence  of  the  power  to  sell  our  own  labor. 
The  power  to  purchase  things  is  dependent  upon  the  power  to 
produce  things  with  which  to  purchase.  The  man  who  cannot 
sell  his  own  labor  cannot  buy  that  of  others ;  nor  can  the  man 
who  is  deprived  of  the  power  to  produce  things  purchase  the 
things  produced  by  others.  In  annihilating  the  power  of  associa 
tion  among  the  Irish  people,  the  manufacturers  of  England  anni 
hilated  the  power  to  purchase  the  products  of  English  looms  — 
the  land-holders  annihilated  the  power  to  consume  the  products 
of  the  earth — the  laborers  annihilated  the  power  to  consume  Irish 
labor — and  the  society  of  Britain  annihilated  the  motion  of  society 
—  or  commerce  —  of  Ireland  ;  the  consequences  of  all  of  which 
were  seen  in  the  fact  that  the  land  and  labor  of  England  herself 
declined  in  value  and  in  power,  for  the  benefit  of  the  classes 
dependent  upon  their  powers  of  appropriation. 

It  might,  however,  be  supposed  that  the  other  markets  whioh 
had  been  acquired  were  of  a  character  to  make  some  amends  for 
the  losses  by  English  land  and  labor  resulting  from  the  steady 
pursuit  of  a  policy  so  entirely  opposed  to  the  enlightened  views 
of  Dr.  Smith ;  and  we  will,  therefore,  turn  to  the  trade  with  the 
hundred  millions  of  the  people  of  India.  The  export  of  cotton 
yarn  and  cloth  to  that  country  did  not  then  amount  to  70,000,000 
of  pounds,  nor  did  the  import  of  raw  cotton  amount  to  200,000 
bales,  of  400  pounds  each  ;  and  yet  this  constituted  the  only  item 
of  the  trade  with  that  country  that  was  of  any  essential  import 
ance  ;  or  that  was  materially  dependent  upon  the  maintenance  of 
the  system  above  described.  The  quantity  of  cotton  now  con 
verted  into  cloth  in  the  little  town  of  Lowell,  with  its  thirteen 
thousand  operatives,  being  40,000,000  of  pounds,  it  follows,  that 
two  such  little  places  would  perform  all  the  labor  required  for  the 
whole  trade  for  which  England  is  indebted  to  the  destruction  of 
the  cotton  manufacture  and  commerce  of  India  —  a  measure 
attended  with  the  production  of  an  amount  of  misery  and  destitu 
tion  "  unparalleled  in  the  annals  of  commerce." 

For  its  accomplishment,  it  was  needed  that  English  children  of 
the  most  tender  age  should  be  kept  employed  twelve  or  fourteen 
hours  per  day — that  they  should  apply  the  Sunday  morning  hours 
to  the  cleaning  of  the  machinery — and  that  men,  women,  and  chil- 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        425 

dren  should  be  brutified  to  an  extent  that  can  be  imagined  only  by 
those  who  have  studied  the  reports  of  the  commissions  that  have 
at  various  times  been  instituted  with  a  view  to  the  correction  of 
some  of  the  many  evils  resulting  from  the  system.*  Need  we 
wonder  at  the  fact  that  the  theory  of  over-population  —  which  is 
the  theory  of  centralization,  slavery,  and  death  —  had  its  origin 
in  the  country  which  originated  such  a  policy  ? 

The  student  of  Indian  history  is  shocked  when  he  reads  the 
account  of  the  invasion  of  Nadir  Shah,  closing,  as  it  did,  with 
the  plunder  of  Delhi,  the  destruction  of  its  buildings,  and  the 
massacre  of  a  hundred  thousand  of  its  inhabitants  —  and  yet,  how 
utterly  insignificant  was  the  loss  thus  caused,  compared  with  that 
which  has  resulted  from  the  annihilation  of  a  manufacture  that, 
but  half  a  century  since,  gave  employment  to  the  people  of 
"  whole  provinces" — one,  the  account  of  whose  progress  included 
"no  less  than  a  description  of  the  lives  of  half  the  inhabitants  of 
Hindostan"  !  Utterly  insignificant  was  it  when  compared  with  the 

*  "The  crowd  of  low  pot-houses  in  our  manufacturing  districts  is  a  sad 
and  singular  spectacle.  They  are  to  be  found  in  every  street  and  alley  of 
the  towns,  and  in  almost  every  lane  and  turning  of  the  more  rural  villages 
of  those  districts,  if  any  of  those  villages  can  be  called  rural. 

"  The  habit  of  drunkenness  pervades  the  masses  of  the  operatives  to  an 
extent  never  before  known  in  our  country. 

"  In  a  great  number  of  these  taverns  and  pot-houses  of  the  manufacturing 
districts,  prostitutes  are  kept  for  the  express  purpose  of  enticing  the  opera 
tives  to  frequent  them,  thus  rendering  them  doubly  immoral  and  pernicious. 
I  have  been  assured  in  Lancashire,  on  the  best  authority,  that  in  one  of  the 
manufacturing  towns,  and  that,  too,  about  third-rate  in  point  of  size  and 
population,  there  are  sixty  taverns  where  prostitutes  are  kept  by  the  tavern 
landlords,  in  order  to  entice  customers  into  them.  Their  demoralizing  influ 
ence  upon  the  population  cannot  be  exaggerated;  and  yet  these  are  almost  the 
only  resorts  which  the  operatives  have,  when  seeking  amusement  or  relaxa 
tion. 

"  In  those  taverns  where  prostitutes  are  not  actually  kept  for  the  purpose 
of  enticing  customers,  they  are  always  to  be  found  in  the  evenings,  at  the 
time  the  workmen  go  there  to  drink.  In  London  and  in  Lancashire  the  gin- 
palaces  are  the  regular  rendezvous  for  the  abandoned  of  both  sexes,  and  the 
places  where  the  lowest  grade  of  women-of-the-town  resort  to  find  customers. 
It  is  quite  clear  that  young  men,  who  once  begin  to  meet  their  friends  at 
these  places,  cannot  long  escape  the  moral  degradation  of  these  hot-houses 
of  vice. 

"The  singular  and  remarkable  difference  between  the  respective  condition 
of  the  peasants  and  operatives  of  Germany  and  Switzerland,  and  those  of 
England  and  Ireland,  in  this  respect,  is  alone  sufficient  to  prove  the  singular 
difference  between  their  respective  social  condition. 

"  The  village  inn  in  Germany  is  quite  a  different  kind  of  place  to  the  vil 
lage  inn  in  England.  It  is  intended  and  used  less  for  mere  drinking  than  as 
a  place  for  meeting  and  conversation:  it  is,  so  to  speak,  the  villagers'  club." 
—  KAY  :  Social  Condition  of  the  People  of  England  and  of  Europe,  vol.  i.  p.  232, 

TOL.  I.— 28 


426  CHAPTER   XVII.    §  6. 

daily  and  hourly  waste  of  capital  now  resulting  from  a  total  ab 
sence  of  demand  for  the  exertion  of  physical  or  mental  capacity — 
with  the  decline  and  death  of  commerce  —  the  ruin  of  Dacca  and 
other  famous  and  flourishing  cities  —  the  abandonment  of  rich 
lands  —  the  unceasing  exhaustion  of  the  soil — the  resolution  of 
society  into  a  body  of  grasping  money-lenders  on  the  one  hand, 
and  wretched  cultivators  on  the  other  —  and  the  inauguration  of 
famine  and  pestilence  as  the  chronic  diseases  of  a  people  inferior 
to  none  in  moral  and  intellectual  qualities,  and  embracing  a  tenth 
of  the  population  of  the  world.  The  booty  obtained  by  Nadir 
was  estimated  at  five  hundred  millions  of  dollars  ;  and  yet,  large 
as  was  its  amount,  very  far  greater  is  that  annual  tax  imposed 
upon  the  people  of  Hindostan  by  a  system  that  —  by  forbidding 
association — by  forbidding  combination  of  effort  —  by  forbidding 
the  development  of  the  human  faculties  —  and  by  forbidding  the 
existence  of  that  commerce  by  help  of  which  alone  capital  is  accu 
mulated  —  converts  the  whole  body  of  the  people  of  that  great 
country  into  candidates  for  admission  into  the  public  service,  as 
the  only  possible  means  of  advancement.  Greatly  superior  as  is 
the  loss  inflicted,  as  greatly  inferior  is  the  gain  to  those  by  whom 
the  loss  is  caused.  Nadir  did  obtain  an  enormous  amount  of 
plunder,  but  the  English  people  have  gained  nothing  but  the  pri 
vilege  of  employing  themselves  as  transporters,  spinners,  and  wea 
vers  of  a  trivial  quantity  of  cotton  ;  a  privilege  obtained  at  the 
cost  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  rights  of  a  hundred  millions  of  people 
abroad,  and  the  establishment  at  home  of  the  doctrine  proclaimed 
by  Mr.  Huskisson,  in  1825,  that  "to  enable  capital  to  obtain  a 
fair  remuneration,  the  price  of  labor  must  be  kept  down ;"  or,  in 
other  words,  that  to  enable  trade  to  thrive,  men  must  be  enslaved. 
The  destruction  of  the  temple  of  Ephesus  by  the  torch  of  the  in 
cendiary  Erostratus,  animated  thereto,  as  he  was,  by  a  desire  to 
perpetuate  the  recollection  of  his  existence,  will  probably  appear 
to  future  ages  to  have  been  an  act  of  the  highest  wisdom,  when 
compared  with  the  annihilation  of  commerce  throughout  immense 
communities  under  the  mistaken  idea  that  prosperity  to  any  single 
one  was  to  be  obtained  under  a  system  like  that  denounced  by  Dr. 
Smith  —  looking  solely  and  exclusively  to  the  purchase  of  all  the 
raw  material  of  manufacture,  labor  included,  at  low  prices,  and  the 
sale  of  cloth  at  high  ones. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL    CHANGES    OF   FORM.        427 

Turning  to  the  West  Indies,  to  Portugal,  and  to  Turkey,  we 
meet  everywhere,  as  the  reader  has  already  seen,  the  same  result 

—  the  power  to  purchase  the  products  of  English  labor  having 
perished  with  the  loss  of  the  power  to  sell  their  own.     All  of 
those  countries  are  paralyzed.      In  all,  circulation  has  so   far 
ceased,  that  they  more  resemble  dead  than  living  bodies ;  and 
England  now  presents  the  extraordinary  spectacle  of  a  nation 
possessing,  more  than  any  other,  the  power  to  render  service  to 
mankind,  yet  surrounded  by  colonies  and  allies,  all  of  whom  are 
slowly,  but  certainly,  passing  towards  entire  inanition  —  while 
she,  herself,  is  exhausting  her  energies  in  the  ceaseless  effort  to 
extend  throughout  the  world  the  system  by  means  of  which  they 
have  been  so  much  reduced. 

§  7.  In  the  natural  order  of  things,  the  prices  of  all  the  rude 
products  of  the  earth  tend  to  rise,  and  for  the  reason,  that  as 
population  increases,  as  the  power  of  association  becomes  more 
complete,  as  individuality  is  more  and  more  developed,  and  as 
circulation  becomes  more  rapid,  the  men  engaged  in  developing 
the  resources  of  the  earth  are  enabled  more  readily  to  maintain 
commerce  with  each  other.  In  one  country,  silver  or  gold  is 
mined ;  in  another,  corn,  or  cotton,  is  raised ;  and  in  a  third, 
coal,  iron,  and  other  ores,  are  extracted  from  the  earth ;  but,  in 
their  rude  state,  none  of  these  can  readily  be  transported.  The 
gold-miner  needs  clothing,  paper,  books,  and  iron  instruments  — 
but  he  has  no  use  for  wool,  rags,  or  iron  ore  ;  and  until  the  pro 
ducers  of  these  latter  obtain  the  means  of  diminishing  the  bulk  of 
their  commodities — compressing  the  rags  and  the  food  into  paper 

—  the  wool  and  the  food  into  cloth — or  the  food  and  the  ore  into 
instruments  useful  for  the  miner  —  there  can  be  no  direct  inter 
course  between  them. 

That  such  intercourse  may  exist,  it  is,  then,  indispensable  that 
employments  become  diversified — the  producer  and  the  consumer 
of  corn  taking  their  places  by  each  other's  side,  in  accordance 
with  the  idea  so  well  expressed  by  Dr.  Smith.  As  that  idea  is 
more  and  more  fully  carried  out,  commerce  bet  ween  the  producers 
of  corn  and  wool  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  gold  on  the  other,  be 
comes  more  and  more  direct  —  the  necessary  result  of  constant 
diminution  in  the  quantity  of  labor  required  for  changing  the 


428  CHAPTER  xvn.  §  7. 

places,  or  the  forms,  of  the  rude  products  of  the  earth.  With 
every  diminution  in  the  obstacles  to  direct  commerce,  thus  pro 
duced,  the  prices  of  raw  materials  and  of  finished  commodities 
approximate  more  nearly  to  each  other — those  of  the  former  tend 
ing  steadily  to  rise,  while  the  others  tend  as  steadily  to  fall ;  and 
thus,  while  one  obtains  more  cloth  for  his  gold,  another  obtains 
more  gold  for  his  food  and  his  wool  —  all,  therefore,  profiting  by 
that  increase  in  the  power  to  command  the  services  of  nature 
which  constitutes  wealth. 

That  the  facts  are  so,  will  readily  be  seen  by  those  who  study  the 
gradual  increase  in  the  prices  of  wheat,  corn,  and  oats  throughout 
our  Western  States  ;  or,  the  yet  greater  changes  resulting  from 
the  creation  of  local  centres  of  exchange,  at  which  hay,  potatoes, 
turnips,  or  other  of  the  most  bulky  articles,  are  converted  into 
cloth,  or  iron  —  the  former  rising  in  price  as  regularly  as  the 
latter  decline ;  as  is  shown  in  the  fact  before  referred  to,  that, 
whereas,  thirty  years  since,  fifteen  tons  of  wheat  were  required,  in 
Ohio,  to  pay  for  a  ton  of  iron,  a  similar  quantity  may  now  be  had 
in  exchange  for  two,  or,  at  most,  three,  tons.  In  England,  in  the 
ten  years  ending  in  1150,  the  power  of  a  quarter  of  wheat  to  com 
mand  gold  in  exchange  was  only,  as  has  been  seen,  21s.  Sd. ; 
whereas,  twenty  years  later,  that  power  had  become  twice  as 
great,  because  of  the  growing  facility  of  intercourse  with  the 
gold-producing  countries,  consequent  upon  an  increased  control 
of  the  powerful  forces  of  nature  in  the  various  processes  required 
for  changing  the  places,  or  the  forms,  of  matter.  The  value  of 
man  steadily  increased,  for  he  could  command  more  gold,  more 
food,  and  more  cloth  in  return  for  a  given  quantity  of  effort.  The 
value  of  gold,  in  England,  declined,  because  it  would  command 
less  of  the  raw  materials  of  manufacture  —  food,  wool,  and  labor. 
To  the  gold-producer  the  utility  of  his  commodity  increased, 
because  it  would  command  in  exchange  a  larger  quantity  of  cloth 
ing  and  other  commodities  required  for  his  consumption. 

Approximation  in  the  prices  of  raw  materials  and  finished 
commodities  is  the  one  essential  characteristic  of  civilization  — 
it  being  the  manifestation  of  a  diminution  of  the  obstacles  stand 
ing  in  the  way  of  association,  and  impeding  the  growth  of  com 
merce.  As  the  mill  comes  nearer  to  the  farm,  there  is  a  constant 
increase  in  the  proportion  borne  by  the  price  of  a  bushel  of  wheat 


OF  MECHANICAL  AND  CHEMICAL  CHANGES  OF  FORM.   429 

to  that  of  a  barrel  of  flour ;  and  that  proportion  still  further  in 
creases  as  improvements  are  effected  in  the  machinery  of  the  mill 
itself.  As  the  processes  of  converting  hides  are  improved,  the 
prices  of  leather,  and  of  all  commodities  in  the  making  of  which 
it  is  required,  tend  steadily  downward ;  but  that  of  hides  so  stead 
ily  advances,  that  whereas,  when  certain  kinds  of  leather  sold  for 
twenty  cents,  hides  were  worth  but  five  cents  a  pound,  now,  when 
the  same  leather  sells  for  fourteen  cents,  the  price  of  the  raw  mate 
rial  is  seven.  In  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  rags  have  increased 
in  price  not  less  than  fifty  per  cent,,  while  paper  has  fallen  thirty 
or  forty  per  cent. ;  and  whereas,  it  then  required  six  pounds  of 
the  one  to  pay  for  a  pound  of  the  other,  the  same  may  now  be 
obtained  for  less  than  three  pounds.  Five-and-twenty  years  since, 
raw  silk  was  low  in  price,  and  silk  goods  were  high ;  but  since 
then,  the  first  has  advanced  fifty  per  cent.,  while  the  last  has  so 
greatly  declined,  that  silks  have  largely  taken  the  place  formerly 
occupied  by  cotton.  The  saw-mill  lowers  the  price  of  planks ; 
and  the  plariing-machine  does  the  same  by  that  of  doors  and  win 
dow-frames  ;  but  they  increase  the  price  of  timber,  and  the  farmer 
of  the  West  is  thus  enabled  to  sell  the  trees  that  before  he  would 
gladly  have  seen  destroyed.  Look  where  he  may,  the  reader  will 
see  that,  in  the  natural  course  of  things,  the  price  of  raw  material 
of  every  kind — land,  labor,  cotton,  wool,  or  corn  —  tends  to  rise 
with  every  increase  in  the  facility  of  intercourse  with  the  men  em 
ployed  in  producing  gold  and  silver.  Everywhere  around,  he  will 
find  evidence  of  the  truth  of  the  proposition,  that  as  population 
grows,  as  the  power  of  association  increases,  as  the  faculties  of 
man  are  more  and  more  developed,  and  as  wealth  augments,  the 
rude  products  of  the  earth  tend  to  increase  in  their  power  to  com 
mand  the  precious  metals  in  exchange,  while  finished  commodities 
tend  as  steadily  to  decline  —  thus  enabling  all,  whether  producers 
of  corn  or  gold,  wool  or  silver,  to  profit  by,  and  to  rejoice  in,  the 
constantly  increasing  power  of  their  fellow-men  to  command  the 
services  of  nature.  Among  communities,  as  among  individuals, 
the  harmony  of  all  real  and  permanent  interests  is  perfect. 

The  British  system  looks,  however,  in  a  direction  exactly  oppo 
site  to  this — being  based  upon  the  idea  of  cheapening  all  the  raw 
materials  of  manufacture,  labor  included.  Examine  it  where  we 
may,  we  find  it  promoting  extension  of  the  cultivation  of  cotton, 


430  CHAPTER  xvn.  §7. 

wool,  sugar,  and  corn,  while  limiting  the  commerce  between  the 
producers  of  those  commodities  and  the  consumers  of  cloth  and 
iron,  by  requiring  the  whole  to  pass  through  the  narrow  strait 
afforded  by  ships  and  distant  mills  —  and  thus  augmenting  the 
obstacles  that  intervene  between  the  growers  of  corn  and  cotton 
and  the  miners  of  silver  and  of  gold.  So  long  as  the  people  of 
India  converted  their  cotton,  rice,  and  sugar  into  cloth,  they  could 
maintain  direct  commerce  with  the  producers  of  the  precious 
metals ;  as  a  consequence  of  which  the  exchanges  were  in  their 
favor  with  every  part  of  the  earth,  with  constant  tendency  to  rise 
in  the  price  of  raw  materials  of  every  kind.  Since  the  prostration 
of  the  cotton  manufacture,  the  difficulty  of  maintaining  commerce 
has  increased  —  the  flow  of  the  precious  metals  has  been  outward 
instead  of  inward  —  and  cotton  has  fallen  to  three  halfpence  a 
pound ;  while  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  cotton  cloth  has  so  largely 
increased,  that  its  consumption  does  not  probably  exceed  a  single 
pound  per  head.  So  has  it  been  in  Ireland,  Jamaica,  Portugal, 
and  Turkey  —  in  all  of  which  the  obstacles  to  commerce  have 
increased,  with  corresponding  decline  in  the  price  of  labor  and  of 
raw  materials  of  every  kind;  and  that  decline  has  been  in  the 
direct  ratio  of  the  increase  in  the  facilities  for  reaching  the 
great  central  market.  A  quarter  of  a  century  since,  the  brown 
sugar  of  India  would  command  in  the  market  of  England  from 
20s.  to  30s.  per  hundredweight,  whereas  it  will  now  commonly 
exchange  for  only  15s.  or  20s.  Forty  years  since,  the  cotton  of 
Carolina  commanded  money  in  England  at  the  rate  of  twenty 
pence  a  pound ;  whereas  it  now  fluctuates  between  four  and  seven 
pence — and  for  the  reason  that  the  obstacles  to  direct  intercourse 
with  the  world  at  large  increase,  when  they  should  as  regularly 
diminish.  Forty  years  since,  flour  was  exported  from  this  coun 
try  at  eight  dollars  a  barrel ;  whereas,  in  the  years  which  imme 
diately  preceded  the  breaking  out  of  the  Crimean  war,  it  had 
fallen  to  little  more  than  half  that  price  —  and  that,  too,  notwith 
standing  the  wonderful  increase  in  the  supply  of  gold  that  had 
resulted  from  the  discovery  of  the  Californian  mines. 

§  8.     The  reader  may  perhaps  understand  the  working  of  the 
system  above  described  after  an  examination  of  the  following  com 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES    OP    FORM.        431 

parative  prices  of  commodities  that  the  people  of  England  have  to 
sell,  and  those  that  they  need  to  buy  : — 

1815.  1852. 

Those  they  sell  are — 

Bar  iron,  per  ton £13     5s.  (M.  £9     Os.  Off. 

Tin,  per  cwt 700  520 

Copper,   "     650  5  10     0 

Lead,     "       166  140 

Those  they  buy  are — 

Cotton,  per  Ib 016      006 

Sugar,  per  cwt 300       100 

While  the  principal  articles  of  foreign  produce  have  fallen  to 
one-third  of  the  prices  of  1815,  iron,  copper,  tin,  and  lead,  the 
commodities  that  they  supply  to  the  world,  have  declined  but 
about  twenty-five  per  cent.  It  is  more  difficult  to  exhibit  the 
changes  of  woven  goods ;  but  that  the  planters  are  constantly 
giving  more  cotton  for  less  cloth,  will  be  seen  on  an  examination 
of  the  following  facts  in  relation  to  recent  years,  in  which  the 
crop  was  large,  as  compared  with  the  course  of  things  a  few  years 
previously  :  From  1830  to  1835,  the  price  of  cotton  here  was  about 
eleven  cents,  which  we  may  suppose  to  be  about  what  it  would 
yield  in  England,  free  of  freight  and  charges.  In  those  years 
our  average  export  was  320,000,000  of  pounds,  yielding  about 
$35,000,000  ;  and  the  average  price  of  cotton  cloth,  per  piece  of 
24  yards,  weighing  5  pounds  12  ounces,  was  Ys.  10d.,  ($1.88,)  and 
that  of  iron,  £6  10s.,  ($31.20.)  Our  exports  would  therefore 
have  produced,  delivered  in  Liverpool,  18,500,000  pieces  of  cloth, 
or  about  1,100,000  tons  of  iron.  In  1845  and  1846,  the  average 
price  here  was  six  and  a  half  cents,  making  the  product  of  a  simi 
lar  quantity,  $20,000,000.  The  price  of  cloth  having  been  6s.  6f  d., 
($1.57^,)  and  that  of  iron,  £10,  ($48,)  the  result  was,  that  the 
planters  could  have,  for  nearly  the  same  quantity  of  cotton,  about 
12,500,000  pieces  of  cloth,  or  about  420,000  tons  of  iron,  also 
delivered  in  Liverpool.  Dividing  the  return  between  the  two 
commodities,  it  stands  thus  : — 

Average  from  1830  to  1835.  1845-6.  Loss. 

Cloth,  pieces 9,250,000  6,250,000  3,000,000 

And  iron,  tons 550,000  210,000  340,000 

The  labor  required  for  converting  cotton  into  cloth  had  been 


432  CHAPTER   XVII.    §  8. 

greatly  diminished,  and  yet  the  proportion  retained  by  the  manu 
facturers  had  greatly  increased,  as  will  now  be  shown  :  — 


Weight  of  Cotton  used. 
1830tol835  .....  320,000,000  .........  110,000,000  .........  210,000,000 

1845  and  1846..  320,000,000  .........     76,000,000  .........  244,000,000 

In  the  first  period,  the  planter  had  thirty-four  per  cent,  of  his 
cotton  returned  to  him  in  the  form  of  cloth,  but  in  the  second, 
only  twenty-four  per  cent.  The  grist-miller  gives  the  farmer 
from  year  to  year  a  larger  proportion  of  the  product  of  his  grain, 
and  thus  the  latter  participates  in  the  advantage  of  every  improve 
ment.  The  cotton-miller  gives  the  planter  from  year  to  year  a 
smaller  proportion  of  the  cloth  produced.  The  one  miller  comes 
daily  nearer  to  the  producer.  The  other  goes  daily  farther  from 
him,  because  he  is  himself  compelled  to  exhaust  his  land,  and  re 
move  from  year  to  year  further  from  his  market. 

How  this  operates  on  a  large  scale  will  now  be  seen  on  an  ex 
amination  of  the  following  facts  :  — 

The  declared  or  actual  value  of  exports  of  British  produce  and 

manufactures  in  1815,  was  ............................................  £51,632,971 

And  the  quantity*  of  foreign  merchandise  retained  for  con 

sumption  in  that  year  was  ............................................  £17,238,841 

This  shows,  of  course,  that  the  prices  of  the  raw  products  of 
the  earth  were  then  high  by  comparison  with  those  of  the  articles 
that  Great  Britain  had  to  sell. 

In  1849,  the  value  of  British  exports  was  ............................  £63,596,025 

And  the  quantity  of  foreign  merchandise  retained  for  con 

sumption  was  no  less  than  ............................................  £80,312,717 

We  see  thus  that  while  the  value  of  exports  had  increased  only 
one-third,  the  produce  received  in  exchange  was  almost  five 
times  greater  ;  and  here  it  is  that  we  find  the  effect  of  that  un 
limited  competition  for  the  sale  in  England  of  the  raw  products 
of  the  world,  and  limited  competition  for  the  purchase  of  the 
manufactured  ones,  which  it  is  the  object  of  the  system  to 
establish. 

*  The  returns  of  imports  into  Great  Britain  are  given  according  to  an 
official  value  established  more  than  a  century  since,  and  thus  the  sum  of  the 
values  is  an  exact  measure  of  the  quantities  imported. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        433 

Look  where  we  may,  we  see  that  while,  under  a  natural  sys 
tem,  the  prices  of  the  raw  products  of  the  earth,  and  those  of 
finished  commodities,  tend  constantly  to  approximation  —  leaving 
a  diminished  proportion  for  the  parties  engaged  in  the  work  of 
transportation  and  conversion  —  directly  the  reverse  is  the  case  in 
all  the  countries  subject  to  the  British  policy,  the  proportions  of 
those  parties  tending  constantly  to  increase,  and  the  power  of  the 
producer  to  command  the  services  of  money  tending  as  constantly 
to  decrease.  The  lower  the  price  of  cloth,  and  the  higher  the 
price  of  food  and  cotton,  the  greater  will  be  the  tendency  towards 
freedom.  The  higher  that  of  cloth,  and  the  lower  those  of  food 
and  cotton,  the  greater  will  be  the  tendency  towards  slavery. 
The  British  system  tends  to  cheapen  the  raw  materials  of  cloth, 
and  to  enhance  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  cloth  itself;  arid  thus 
does  it  look  in  a  direction  precisely  opposite  to  that  of  advancing 
civilization.  Retrograde  always,  and  everywhere,  the  facts  oc 
curring  under  it  could  be  explained  only  by  means  of  a  theory  of 
over-population,  by  help  of  which  the  ultimate  slavery  of  man 
could  be  made  a  part  of  the  divine  law. 

§  9.  The  higher  the  price  of  raw  materials,  and  the  lower  the 
price  of  finished  commodities,  the  less  will  be  the  proportion  of 
the  total  product  of  labor  absorbed  by  the  persons  engaged  in  the 
work  of  transportation  and  conversion ;  and  the  less,  necessarily, 
will  be  the  proportion  borne  by  those  classes  to  the  mass  of  which 
society  is  composed.  The  nearer  the  mill  to  the  farmer,  and  the 
more  perfect  its  machinery,  the  more  nearly  will  the  price  of  wheat 
and  flour  approximate  to  each  other — and  the  smaller  will  be  the 
proportion  borne  by  the  labor  required  for  carrying  the  raw  pro 
duct  to  the  mill,  for  converting  it  into  flour,  and  for  carrying  the 
flour  back  again  to  his  home,  to  that  which  had  been  given  to  the 
improvement  of  the  land  required  for  the  production  of  the  wheat 
itself.  In  the  natural  course  of  things,  therefore,  the  proportion 
of  the  labor  of  man  given  to  augmenting  the  quantity  of  raw  pro 
ducts  should  be  a  constantly  increasing  one,  and  that  given  to 
changing  them  in  place,  or  in  form,  a  constantly  decreasing  one. 

Directly  the  reverse  of  this,  however,  is  the  effect  produced  by 
the  system  which  looks  to  the  building  up  of  trade  upon  the  ruins 
of  commerce.  The  men  of  India  who  raised  cotton  and  rice  could 


434 


CHAPTER   XVII.    §  9. 


formerly  exchange  directly  with  their  neighbors  who  converted 
it  into  cloth ;  and  all  could  give  the  whole  of  their  time  to  the 
work  of  producing  wool  and  food  on  the  one  hand,  and  cloth  on 
the  other.  Now,  all  are  obliged  to  send,  or  carry,  their  rice  and 
their  wool  to  a  place  fifteen  thousand  miles  distant,  and  to  do  this 
by  aid  of  oxen,  horses,  ships,  canal  boats,  and  other  machinery ; 
as  a  consequence  of  which  the  proportion  of  the  labor  given  to 
transportation  and  conversion  has  largely  increased,  while  that 
given  to  production  has  as  constantly  decreased.  The  result  of 
this  is  seen  in  the  fact,  that  after  having  annihilated  the  Indian 
manufactures,  the  total  quantity  of  cotton  now  supplied  to  Eng 
land  is  not  more  than  could  be  converted  in  a  little  town  con 
taining  twenty  thousand  operatives.  So  has  it  been  in  Ireland, 
where  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  labor  was  required  to  be 
given  to  effecting  changes  in  the  place  of  things  and  people,  that 
little  remained  to  be  given  to  production,  and  the  market  for 
British  manufactures  proved  to  be  more  and  more  worthless  the 
more  perfectly  it  had  been  secured.*  So  has  it  proved  in  Ja 
maica,  Portugal,  and  Turkey,  in  which,  as  the  proportion  of 
labor  required  to  be  given  to  those  purposes  has  increased,  the 
consumption  of  British  manufactures  has  decreased.  The  pro 
cess  is  exhaustive  ;  and  hence  the  constantly  increasing  necessity 
for  seeking  new  and  more  distant  markets,  with  daily  augmenting 
tendency  to  increase  in  the  proportion  of  the  British  population 
given  to  the  carriage,  the  conversion,  and  the  exchange  of  the 
products  of  distant  lands. 

That  this  effect  is  steadily  being  produced  is  shown  by  the  fol 
lowing  facts,  furnished  by  the  several  recent  censuses  of  the  peo 
ple  of  Great  Britain  : — 

*  The  power  of  Ireland  to  pay  for  British  manufactures  is  dependent  upon 
her  ability  to  furnish  commodities  with  which  to  pay  for  them.  How  en 
tirely  insignificant  the  latter  has  become,  will  be  seen  by  the  following  table 
of  exports  for  the  year  ending  January  5,  1854: — 


Oats,  quarters 1,552,917 

Bacon  and  hams,  cwts 530 

Beef  and  pork,  barrels 472 

Butter,  cwts 17,944 


Oxen,  number 180,785 

Calves       "      5,281 

Sheep,       "      224,550 

Swine,       "      101,396 

Wheat,  quarters 76,495 

From  the  value  of  this  trivial  export  was  to  be  deducted  the  amount  re 
quired  to  be  paid  to  the  absentee  owners  of  land,  and  to  the  government, 
and  it  seems  difficult  to  imagine  how  therts  should  remain  any  thing  to  be 
applied  to  the  payment  for  articles  required  for  consumption. 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        435 


Year. 
1811 

Engaged  in             In 
agriculture.            ma 
35-2  

trade  anrl           .     , 
nufucture. 

44-4  

Hhers*                   '. 
20-4  

rotal. 

100 

1821 

33-2  

45-9  

20-9  

100 

1831 
1841 

28-2  ,  
..  25-17... 

42-0    
44-64... 

20-8  

30-19.... 

100 
100 

We  have  here  a  gradual  decline  in  the  proportion  of  persons 
employed  in  augmenting  the  quantity  of  things  requiring  to  be 
converted  or  exchanged,  until*  from  •£$  it  has  fallen  to  250,  and 
that  in  the  short  space  of  thirty  years  ;  and  the  change  thus  indi 
cated  is  hailed  by  British  economists  as  evidence  of  growing 
civilization  !  Directly  the  opposite  of  this,  however,  is  what  we 
had  a  right  to  look  for — the  power  of  steam  having  been  substi 
tuted  for  that  of  man,  to  the  extent  of  hundreds  of  millions  of 
hands ;  and  all  the  force  thus  gained  having  been  given  to  the  work 
of  changing  the  places,  and  the  forms,  of  the  raw  products  of  the 
earth.  The  effect  should  have  been  that  of  setting  free  the  labors 
of  millions  of  men,  to  be  applied  to  the  augmentation  of  the 
quantity  of  things  susceptible  of  being  converted  or  exchanged  ; 
whereas,  so  far  the  reverse  has  it  been,  that  the  proportion  of 
people  engaged  in  the  works  of  transportation,  conversion,  and 
exchange  has  increased  from  i-g  to  ^jj  —  and  that  in  only  thirty 
years.  The  more  that  nature  is  made  to  supersede  the  labor  of 
men  in  these  departments  of  employment,  the  larger  is  the  pro 
portion  of  their  labor  absorbed  by  them.  The  movement  here,  as 
everywhere,  is  a  retrograde  one  ;  and,  being  so,  may,  perhaps, 
enable  us  to  account  for  the  invention  of  the  Ricardo-Malthusian 
theories. 

The  flour-mill  is  useless  unless  there  is  corn  to  be  ground — and 
the  cotton-mill  is  idle  where  there  is  no  wool  to  be  spun  and 
woven.  The  less  the  labor  required  for  grinding  the  one,  or 
spinning  the  other,  the  less  is  the  necessity  for  increasing  the 
number  of  mills,  unless  the  time  and  mind  thus  set  free  be  ap 
plied  to  the  work  of  developing  the  powers  of  the  earth,  and  thus 
augmenting  the  quantity  of  raw  material  requiring  to  be  con 
verted.  If  the  labor  that  is  economized  be  thus  applied, 

*  Embracing — I.  Capitalists,  bankers,  and  professional  and  other  educated 
men ;  II.  Laborers  employed  in  labor  not  agricultural ;  TIL  Male  servants, 
20  years  of  age  and  upwards :  IV.  Navy,  army,  and  seamen  in  merchant 
service ;  V.  Persons  of  independent  income  ;  VI.  Alms-people. 


436  CHAPTER   XVII.    §  9. 

then  more  mills  will  be  needed ;  and  then  the  quantity  of  labor 
applied  to  the  work  of  conversion,  or  transportation,  may  advan 
tageously  be  increased ;  but  not  otherwise.  In  the  case  before 
us,  the  proportion  of  the  labor  given  to  conversion  increases  in 
the  direct  ratio  of  the  diminution  of  the  necessity  for  it ;  and  the 
proportion  given  to  production  diminishes  in  the  ratio  of  the  in 
crease  in  the  machinery  used  for  the  conversion  of  the  things  pro 
duced.  There  is,  therefore,  a  constant  increase  in  the  number  of 
people  requiring  to  be  fed  and  clothed,  accompanied  by  as  con 
stant  a  decrease  in  the  number  of  persons  employed  in  furnishing 
the  raw  material  to  be  used  by  those  who  need  supplies  of  food 
and  clothing. 

One-fourth  only  of  the  people  of  England  being  engaged  in 
increasing  the  quantities  of  things,  while  three-fourths  are  either 
entirely  unoccupied,  or  are  occupied  in  effecting  changes  in  their 
places,  in  their  forms,  or  in  their  ownership,  it  follows  necessarily 
that  the  major  part  of  the  things  produced  is  absorbed  in  its  pas 
sage  from  the  place  of  production  to  that  of  consumption.  That 
such  is  really  the  case,  we  learn  from  a  leading  British  journal,* 
which  tells  its  readers  that  "the  number  of  retail  traders  and 
shopkeepers  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  requirements  of 
society,  or  the  numbers  of  the  producing  classes.  There  are 
in  many  places,"  as  it  continues,  "ten  shopkeepers  to  do  the 
work  which  one  would  suffice  for  —  such  at  least  is  Mr.  Mill's 
estimate.  Now  these  men,  industrious  and  energetic  as  they  are, 
do  not  add  to  the  production,  and  therefore  not  to  the  wealth,  of 
the  community ;  they  merely  distribute  what  others  produce. 
Nay  more,  in  proportion  as  they  are  too  numerous,  do  they  dimi 
nish  the  wealth  of  the  community.  They  live,  it  is  true,  many 
of  them,  by  'snatching  the  bread  out  of  each  other's  mouths;' 
but  still  they  do  live,  and  often  make  great  profits.  These  profits 
are  made,  it  is  obvious,  by  charging  a  per-centage  on  the  article 
they  sell.  If,  therefore,  there  are  two  of  these  retailers  to  be  sup 
ported  by  a  community  when  one  would  suffice  to  do  the  work, 
the  articles  they  sell  must  cost  that  community  more  than  needs  to 
be  the  case,  and  so  far  the  country  is  impoverished  by  supporting 
an  '  unproductive  laborer'  too  many.  Any  one  who  examines 
into  the  subject  is  surprised  to  find  how  small  a  portion  of  the 
*  North  British  Review,  November,  1852. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        437 

price  paid  by  the  consumer  for  any  article  goes  to  the  producer  or 
importer,  and  how  large  a  portion  is  absorbed  by  the  distributor.*  " 

We  have  here  the  real  difficulty  of  British  society,  and  the  source 
to  which  we  are  indebted  for  the  suggestion  of  the  extraordinary 
theory  of  Mr.  Malthus.  The  system  tends  unnaturally  to  increase 
the  proportion  of  consumers,  and  to  cause  the  absorption  of  so 
large  a  portion  of  the  product  of  labor  on  its  passage  from  the 
field  in  which  it  is  produced,  to  the  mouth  that  needs  to  eat  it,  or 
the  back  that  needs  to  wear  it,  that  its  producer  finds  it  difficult 
to  obtain  the  means  of  supporting  life.  The  man  who  labors  in 
the  field  upon  land  yielding  thirty  or  forty  bushels  to  the  acre, 
receives  but  six  shillings,  or  the  price  of  a  single  bushel,  for  his 
week's  work ;  and  yet,  the  product  of  his  year's  labor  is  probably 
but  little  short  of  a  thousand  bushels.  His  share  is,  therefore, 
six,  eight,  or  ten,  per  cent.,  while  ninety,  or  more,  per  cent,  is 
absorbed  by  those  who  own  the  machinery  with  which  he  works 
— by  those  who  control  its  management — by  those  who  direct  the 
government,  those  who  carry  arms,  those  who  live  in  almshouses 
—  and  those  who,  in  a  thousand  other  ways,  stand  between  the 
production  of  the  food  and  its  consumption. 

The  poor  man  of  the  west  of  Ireland  is  glad  to  get  five  pence 
for  a  pair  of  chickens  that  wall  sell  in  London  for  as  many  shil 
lings  ;  and  thus  does  he  receive  eight  per  cent,  as  the  price  of  his 
labor — the  remaining  ninety-two  per  cent,  being  absorbed  by  the 
class  of  middlemen,  f  When,  however,  he  desires  to  invest  the 

*  "I  think  any  one  who  has  had  occasion  to  inquire,  in  particular  cases, 
what  portion  of  the  price  paid  at  a  shop  for  an  article  really  goes  to  the  per 
son  who  made  it,  must  have  been  astonished  to  find  how  small  it  is.  It  is  of 
great  importance  to  consider  the  cause  of  this."  *  "It 

does  not  arise  from  the  extravagant  remuneration  of  capital.  I  think  it  pro 
ceeds  from  two  causes :  one  of  them  is,  the  very  great,  I  may  say  the  extra 
vagant,  portion  of  the  whole  produce  of  the  community  which  now  goes  to  the  men 
distributors ;  the  immense  amount  that  is  taken  up  by  the  different  classes 
of  dealers,  and  especially  by  retailers.  Competition  has,  no  doubt,  some 
tendency  to  reduce  this  rate  of  remuneration;  still,  I  am  afraid  that,  in  most 
cases,  and  looking  at  it  as  a  whole,  the  effect  of  competition  is,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  fees  of  professional  people,  rather  to  divide  the  amount  among  a  larger 
number,  and  so  diminish  the  share 'of  each,  than  to  lower  the  scale  of  what 
is  obtained  by  the  class  generally."  *  *  *  "  If  the  business 
of  distribution,  which  now  employs,  taking  the  different  classes  of  dealers 
and  their  families,  perhaps  more  than  a  million  of  the  inhabitants  of  this 
country,  could  be  done  by  a  hundred  thousand  people,  I  think  the  other 
nine  hundred  thousand  could  be  dispensed  with."  —  J.  S.  MILL:  Evidence 
before  a  Committee  of  the  House  of  Commons,  June  6,  1850. 
'f  See  page  332,  ante. 


438  CHAPTER   XVII.    §  9. 

proceeds  in  sugar,  he  pays  five  pence  for  that  which  had  not 
yielded  to  its  original  producer  as  much  cloth  as  could  be  pur 
chased  with  a  farthing  —  and  thus  is  more  than  nine-tenths  of  the 
product  of  labor  absorbed  by  intermediate  men,  who  live  by 
means  of  the  exercise  of  their  powers  of  appropriation.  The 
poor  Hindoo  sells  his  cotton  for  three  halfpence  a  pound,  of 
which  the  government  takes  one-half,  and  the  money-lender  half 
of  the  remainder ;  and  when,  after  the  lapse  of  years,  it  comes 
back  to  him  in  the  form  of  cloth,  he  pays  for  it  twelve,  fifteen,  or 
twenty  pence — being  forty  or  fifty  times  more  than  it  had  yielded 
him  What  goes  with  all  the  difference  ?  It  is  absorbed  on  the 
road  from  the  land  on  which  it  has  been  produced  to  the  house, 
perhaps  on  that  same  land,  in  which  reside  the  people  by  whom 
it  is  to  be  worn.  The  farmer  of  Iowa  sells  his  corn  at  ten  cents  a 
bushel,  but  by  the  time  it  reaches  the  consumer  in  Manchester,  it 
has  so  much  increased  in  value  that  it  pays  for  several  days  of 
labor.  That  labor  yields  hundreds  of  yards  of  cotton  cloth,  but 
by  the  time  the  latter  reaches  Iowa,  it  has,  in  its  turn,  so  much  in 
creased  in  value  that  a  bushel  of  corn  is  given  in  exchange  for  a 
single  yard  —  not  less  than  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  whole  having 
been  absorbed  in  the  process  of  making  the  exchanges. 

The  system  tends  to  increase  the  disproportion  between  the 
price  of  the  rude  product  of  the  earth  and  the  finished  one  —  to 
produce  cheap  raw  materials  and  dear  manufactures ;  and  that  is 
the  road  towards  barbarism.  It  seeks  to  augment  the  difficulties 
lying  between  the  consumer  and  the  producer,  while  building  up 
the  fortunes  of  those  who  stand  between  them ;  and  hence  it  is 
that  it  gave  birth  to  the  idea  of  over-population  —  an  idea  inse 
parably  connected  with  that  of  the  ultimate  enslavement  of  man.* 

*  "  When  Mr.  McCulloch  tells  us  to  look  at  the  success  of  our  large  pro 
perties  and  larger  farms,  let  us  look  at  the  whole  population  —  let  us  look  at 
the  fact  that,  at  the  very  moment  of  his  writing,  about  every  tenth  person  in 
England  was  a  pauper — let  us  look  at  our  prisons,  our  poor-laws,  our  union 
workhouses,  our  poisonings  for  the  sake  of  burial-fees,  our  emigration,  as  if 
our  people  were  flying  like  rats,  helter-skelter,  from  a  drowning  ship.  Let 
us  sum  up  the  whole,  and  then  perhaps  we  should  find  that  our  boasted  sys 
tem  of  social  distribution  was  no  more  successful  than  the  muster  of  one 
regiment,  when  we  should  find,  on  the  one  hand,  order  and  competence ;  on 
the  other,  rags  and  tatters,  wives  abandoned,  parents  neglected,  children 
left  to  the  hazard  of  casual  charity,  and  too  often  a  dark  shadow  of  vice  and 
wretchedness,  following  in  the  train  of  our  vaunted  institutions."  —  Hugh 
Miller. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        489 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT  CONTINUED. 

§  1.  IN  the  natural  order  of  events,  the  necessity  for  the  ser 
vices  of  the  trader  and  transporter  tends  towards  diminution  ;  and 
with  every  increase  in  the  power  of  man  to  maintain  direct  com 
merce  with  his  fellow-man,  the  circulation  of  society  tends  to 
acceleration  —  enabling  each  and  every  one  to  find  a  purchaser, 
on  the  instant,  for  his  time  and  talents,  and  thus  to  become  a 
competitor  for  the  purchase  of  those  of  others.  Capital  then 
accumulates  rapidly,  with  constant  tendency  to  further  develop 
ment  of  the  various  faculties,  and  constant  increase  in  the  facility 
of  combination,  and  in  the  tendency  to  further  progress.  When 
ever,  and  wherever,  the  reverse  is  seen  —  wherever  the  necessity 
for  the  services  of  the  trader  and  transporter  is  an  increasing  one 
—  the  opposite  effects  are  seen  —  the  circulation  becoming  more 
and  more  languid — the  waste  of  power  increasing — and  commerce 
gradually  declining,  until  at  length  it  ceases  to  exist. 

Stoppage  of  circulation  —  as  fatal  to  the  social  as  it  is  to  the 
physical  body  —  is  the  natural  tendency  of  the  British  system. 
Hence  it  is  that  we  have  been  called  upon  to  remark  the  total 
disappearance  of  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  negroes  imported 
into  the  West  India  islands  ;  and  the  almost  total  waste  of  power 
among  those  who  still  exist.  Hence,  too,  it  is  that  the  marks  of 
approaching  dissolution  are  now  so  clearly  obvious  in  Ireland  and 
in  India.  To  the  same  cause  was  due  the  growth  of  pauperism 
in  the  days  of  Mr.  Malthus  ;  as  well  as  in  those  later  days  when 
England  was  inundated  with  crowds  of  Irishmen,  eager  to  sell 
their  labor  at  any  price  —  causing  her  poorhouses  to  become  so 
filled  as  to  threaten  to  swamp  the  land  and  its  owners  by  the  tax 
ation  required  for  their  support. 

Such  being  the  facts,  the  question  arose,  as  to  what  was  the 
cause  to  which  they  were  to  be  attributed  ;  and,  most  naturally, 


440  CHAPTER  xvur.  §  1. 

the  advocates  of  the  system  which  looked  to  the  cheapening  of 
raw  materials,  ascribed  them  all  to  the  scarcity,  and  consequent 
high  price,  of  food.  The  land-owners  —  believing,  with  Adam 
Smith,  that  "if  the  whole  produce  of  America  in  grain  of  all 
sorts,  salt  provisions,  and  fish,"  were  "forced  into  the  market  of 
England,"  it  would  be  "a  great  discouragement  to  agriculture" 
—  had  endeavored,  as  the  reader  has  seen,  to  shield  themselves 
against  the  operation  of  the  mercantile  system,  by  the  passage  of 
laws  preventive  of  the  importation  of  food  except  under  certain 
circumstances ;  and  to  the  existence  of  those  laws  was  now 
ascribed  a  state  of  things  that  was  only  the  natural  product  of 
the  policy  whose  error  had  been  so  fully  exposed  in  the  Wealth 
of  Nations. 

The  people  were,  however,  assured  that  if  they  wished  to  find 
the  cause  why  two  laborers  had  so  long  been  seeking  employment 
when  only  one  could  find  it,  they  must  look  for  it  in  the  laws 
above  referred  to  ;  and  this  assurance  came  from  the  selfsame 
persons  to  whose  opinions  expression  had  been  given  by  Mr. 
Huskisson,  twenty  years  before,  when  declaring  that  "to  give 
capital  a  fair  remuneration,  the  price  of  labor  must  be  kept 
down."  Now,  however,  they  professed  to  move  in  an  opposite 
direction  —  seeking  to  raise  wages  at  the  expense  of  capital ;  not, 
however,  their  own  capital.  Repeal  the  corn  laws,  said  they,  and 
there  will  be  two  employers  seeking  one  laborer,  and  the  price  of 
labor  will  rise ;  and  then  money  will  be  abundant,  while  corn 
will  be  cheap.  The  laws  were  repealed,  but  the  effect  has  been 
directly  the  reverse  of  what  was  promised  —  the  circulation  of 
society  having  diminished  when  it  should  have  increased.  Instead 
of  men  having  been  enabled  to  come  nearer  to  each  other,  and 
more  and  more  to  dispense  with  the  services  of  the  trader  and 
transporter,  they  have  been  constantly  receding  from  each  other — 
emigration  from  the  British  islands  having  far  exceeded  any  thing 
that  had  before  been  known.  Instead  of  tending  to  restore  society 
to  its  natural  proportions,  the  repeal  has  increased  the  dispropor 
tion  that  before  existed  —  the  rural  population  having  fled  from 
the  land,  and  thus  created  demand  for  ships  and  sailors.*  Instead 

*  "The  wheel  of  'improvement'  is  now  seizing  another  class,  the  most 
Stationary  class  in  England.  A  startling  emigration  movement  has  sprung 
up  among  the  smaller  English  farmers,  especially  those  holding  heavy  clay 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        441 

of  diminishing  centralization,  and  thus  establishing  a  motion  in  the 
direction  of  freedom,  it  has  rendered  centralization  more  complete, 
with  daily  diminution  in  the  power  of  the  laborer  to  determine  for 
whom  he  will  work,  and  what  shall  be  his  reward ;  and  this  it  has 
done,  too,  despite  the  counteracting  tendencies  of  the  gold  disco 
veries  of  California  and  Australia. 

§  2.  The  recent  census  shows  that  of  the  total  increase  in  the 
population  of  the  United  Kingdom — less  than  a  single  million — 
more  than  half  has  been  absorbed  by  London ;  while  Manchester, 
Birmingham,  Liverpool,  Glasgow,  and  other  towns  and  cities, 
have  taken  much  more  than  all  the  balance.  The  rural  popula 
tion  of  the  country  has,  therefore,  largely  diminished,  while  the 
town  and  city  one  has  largely  increased  —  the  whole  mass  being 
thus  from  year  to  year  more  and  more  converted  into  mere  traders 
in,  and  transporters  of,  the  produce  of  the  lands  and  labor  of 
other  countries.  Commerce,  therefore,  declines,  with  steady  tend 
ency  to  deterioration  in  the  condition  of  the  yet  remaining  agricul 
tural  population,  as  is  shown  by  Mr.  Cobden,  who  advises  his 
readers  to  "take  a  rural  walk  on  the  downs,  or  the  weald,  or  the 
fens"  —  doing  which  "they  will  find  the  wages  of  agricultural 
laborers  averaging,  at  this  moment,  under  twelve  shillings  a 
week."  "Let  them,"  he  continues,  "ask  how  a  family  of  five 
persons,  which  is  below  their  average,  can  live  with  bread  at  2^d. 
a  pound.  Nobody  can  tell ;  but  follow  the  laborer,  as  he  lays 
down  his  spade  or  mattock,  and  settles  to  his  dinner  in  the  near 
est  barn  or  shed,  and  peep  into  his  wallet,  or  drop  in  at  his  cot 
tage  at  twelve  o'clock,  and  inquire  what  the  family  dinner  consists 
of ;  —  bread,  rarely  any  thing  better,  and  not  always  enough  of 
that,  with  nothing  left  out  of  his  earnings  for  tea,  or  sugar,  or 
soap,  or  candles,  or  clothes,  or  the  schooling  of  his  children,  and 
with  his  next  year's  harvest-money  already  mortgaged  for  shoes  ; 
and  this  is  the  fate  of  millions,  living  at  our  very  doors,  who  con- 
soils,  who,  with  bad  prospects  for  the  coming  harvest,  and  in  want  of  suffi 
cient  capital  to  make  the  great  improvements  on  their  farms  which  would 
enable  them  to  pay  their  old  rents,  have  no  other  alternative  but  to  cross 
the  sea  in  search  of  a  new  country  and  of  new  lands.  I  am  not  speaking 
now  of  the  emigration  caused  by  the  gold  mania,  but  only  of  the  compulsory 
emigration  produced  by  landlordism,  concentration  of  farms,  application  of 
machinery  to  the  soil,  and  introduction  of  the  modern  system  of  agriculture 
on  a  great  scale." —  Correspondence  of  the  New  York  Tribune. 

YOL.  L— 29 


442  CHAPTER   XVIII.     §  2. 

stitute  the  vast  majority  of  the  '  agriculturists'  of  whose  great 
prosperity  we  now  hear  so  much.  Never  within  the  recollection 
of  living  man  was  the  farm  laborers'  condition  so  bad  as  at 
present. ' '  * 

This  is  the  condition  of  millions  of  Englishmen,")*  and  it  is  so, 
because  the  system  looks  to  the  annihilation  of  commerce,  and  the 
substitution  of  trade  —  and  to  the  cheapening  of  raw  material  of 
every  description,  land,  labor,  food,  cotton,  and  wool  ;  while 
maintaining  the  value  of  cloth  and  iron.  Instead  of  looking  to 
the  approximation  of  the  prices  of  the  raw  material  and  the  fin 
ished  commodity — always  an  evidence  of  advancing  civilization — 
it  seeks  to  widen  the  difference  between  the  two  —  always  an  evi 
dence  of  the  approach  to  barbarism. 

*  COBDEN  :    What  Next  ?  and  Next  ?  p.  45. 

•}•  "Our  village  peasantry  are  jostled  about  from  cottage  to  cottage,  or 
from  cottage  to  no  cottage  at  all,  as  freely,  and  with  as  little  regard  to  their 
personal  tastes  and  conveniences  as  if  we  were  removing  our  pigs,  cows,  and 
horses  from  one  sty  or  shed  to  another.  If  they  cannot  get  a  house  over 
their  heads,  they  go  to  the  union,  and  are  distributed — the  man  in  one  part, 
the  wife  in  another,  and  the  children  again  somewhere  else.  That  is  a  set 
tled  thing.  Our  peasantry  bear  it,  or,  if  they  can't  bear  it,  they  die,  and 
there  is  an  end  of  it  on  this  side  of  the  grave ;  though  how  it  will  stand  at 
the  great  audit,  we  leave  an  '  English  Catholic'  to  imagine.  We  only  mean 
to  say  that  in  England  the  work  has  been  done;  cotters  have  been  extermi 
nated;  small  holdings  abolished;  the  process  of  eviction  rendered  super 
fluous;  the  landlord's  word  made  law;  the  refuge  of  the  discontented 
reduced  to  a  workhouse ;  and  all  without  a  shot,  or  a  bludgeon,  or  a  missile 
being  heard  of."  —  London  Times. 

"  The  miserable  character  of  the  houses  of  our  peasantry  is,  of  itself,  and 
independently  of  the  causes  which  have  made  the  houses  so  wretched, 
degrading  and  demoralizing  the  poor  of  our  rural  districts  in  a  fearful  man 
ner.  It  stimulates  the  unhealthy  and  unnatural  increase  of  population.  The 
young  peasants  from  their  earliest  years  are  accustomed  to  sleep  in  the  same 
bed-rooms  with  people  of  both  sexes,  and  with  both  married  and  unmarried 
persons.  They  therefore  lose  all  sense  of  the  indelicacy  of  such  a  life.  They 
know,  too,  that  they  can  gain  nothing  by  deferring  their  marriages  and  by 
saving ;  that  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  obtain  better  houses  by  so  doing ; 
and  that  in  many  cases  they  must  wait  many  years  before  they  could  obtain 
a  separate  house  of  any  sort.  They  feel  that  if  they  defer  their  marriage 
for  ten  or  fifteen  years,  they  will  be  at  the  end  of  that  period  in  just  the 
same  position  as  before,  and  no  better  off  for  their  waiting.  Having,  then, 
lost  all  hope  of  any  improvement  of  their  social  situation,  and  all  sense  of 
the  indelicacy  of  taking  a  wife  home  to  the  bedroom  already  occupied  by 
parents,  brothers,  and  sisters,  they  marry  early  in  life  —  often,  if  not  gene 
rally,  before  the  age  of  twenty — and  very  often  occupy,  for  the  first  part  of 
their  married  life,  another  bed  in  the  already  crowded  sleeping-room  of  their 
parents  !  In  this  way  the  morality  of  the  peasants  is  destroyed  ;  the  num 
bers  of  this  degraded  population  are  unnaturally  increased,  and  their  means 
of  subsistence  are  diminished  by  the  increasing  competition  of  their  increas 
ing  numbers."  —  KAY:  Social  Condition  of  Europe,  vol.  i.  p.  472. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        443 

The  repeal  of  the  corn  laws  having  diminished  the  rapidity  of 
circulation,  the  consequences  have  been  seen  in  the  fact  that  the 
waste  of  labor  has  increased  ;  in  proof  of  which  may  be  adduced 
the  fact  that  a  recent  writer — Mr.  Mayhew  —  informs  his  readers 
that,  in  thirteen  weeks,  "no  less  than  eleven  thousand  vagabonds 
were  ascertained  to  have  passed  through  a  little  town"  of  less  than 
double  that  amount  of  population.  The  same  fact,  however,  is 
obvious  in  all  the  English  books ;  and  particularly  in  those  of 
Mr.  Dickens.  Two  laborers  are  everywhere  seeking  the  single 
employer  ;  and  a  dozen  shopkeepers  are  always  on  the  watch  for 
the  single  purchaser.  That  measure  was  but  another  step  in  the 
path  of  centralization  —  the  terminus  of  which  is  always  found  in 
slavery,  depopulation,  and  death.  The  real  remedy  was  to  be 
sought  in  the  direction  of  a  system  looking  to  the  restoration  of 
society  to  its  natural  proportions,  and  to  the  reproduction  of  the 
circulation  that  had  so  long  been  stopped.  Had  the  people  of 
Ireland,  in  1846,  been  reinvested  with  the  right  of  managing 
their  own  affairs  in  their  own  way,  a  market  would  have  been 
made  among  themselves  for  all  their  labor-power ;  and  then  the 
laborers  of  England  would  have  found  themselves  no  longer  over 
whelmed  by  a  torrent  of  "half-fed  and  half-civilized  Celts,  reduc 
ing  the  standard  of  living  and  of  comfort "  everywhere  —  forcing 
them  to  accept  diminished  wages,  and  aiding  in  giving  support 
to  the  doctrine  that  "the  natural  rate  of  wages  is  that  which  will 
enable  men,  one  ivith  another,  to  subsist  and  perpetuate  their 
species,  without  increase  or  diminution."  Had  they  been  per 
mitted  so  to  do,  the  competition  for  the  hire  of  land,  in  both  Eng 
land  and  Ireland,  would  have  been  less,  and  the  landlords  would 
have  been  unable  to  demand  so  large  a,  proportion  of  the  pro 
duct;  and  yet  the  quantity  of  their  rents  would  have  been 
greater,  because  prosperous  tenants  would  have  been  enabled 
more  rapidly  to  improve  the  land,  and  the  crops  would  largely 
have  increased.  Had  they  been  permitted  so  to  do,  agriculture 
would  have  absorbed  a  larger  proportion  of  English  labor,  while 
Irish  mining  and  manufactures  would  have  taken  up  that  of  the 
sister  isle;  and. the  competition  among  English  artisans  would 
have  been  less — enabling  the  workman  to  claim  larger  wages,  and 
to  become  himself  an  employer.  Directly  the  reverse  of  this, 
however,  was  the  policy  commenced  by  Mr.  Huskisson,  and  per- 


444  CHARTER   XVIII.    §3. 

fected  by  Sir  Robert  Peel,  who  urged  the  necessity  for  cheap 
food,  as  a  means  of  enabling  the  manufacturer  to  lower  the  wages 
of  labor ;  and  thus  still  further  to  carry  out  the  system  under 
which  there  had  been  produced  an  almost  total  cessation  in  the 
motion  of  society  throughout  all  the  countries  subject  to  it.* 

What  is  needed  in  all  those  countries,  and  in  England  herself, 
is  a  restoration  of  the  circulation  —  a  restoration  of  commerce  ; 
and  until  that  shall  have  been  effected,  the  disease  of  over-popu 
lation  must  be  an  ever  growing  one. 

§  3.  With  the  growth  of  commerce,  the  labor  of  the  present 
acquires  a  constantly  increased  control  over  the  accumulations  of 
the  past :  with  its  decline,  and  consequent  increase  in  the  supre 
macy  of  trade,  the  past  acquires  increased  power  over  the  present. 
With  the  one,  the  circulation  increases  and  becomes  more  steady ; 
whereas,  with  the  other,  it  decreases  and  becomes  more  fitful. 
Based  on  the  single  idea  of  extending  the  dominion  of  trade,  the 
tendency  of  the  English  system  is  towards  the  arrest  of  motion 
everywhere;  and  the  more  it  is  arrested,  the  greater  becomes  the 
power  of  the  trader  to  carry  into  effect  the  doctrine  which  teaches 
that  to  cheap  raw  materials  of  every  kind  —  cotton,  food,  and 
labor  —  England  is  to  be  indebted  for  the  maintenance  of  her 
supremacy  in  the  trading  world.  The  less  rapid  the  circulation 
of  cotton  —  the  more  it  accumulates  in  warehouses  —  the  more  is 
the  dealer  in  cotton  goods  enabled  to  dictate  the  prices  at  which 
he  will  buy,  and  those  at  which  he  will  sell.  The  more  unsteadi 
ness  in  the  price  of  cotton  goods,  or  iron,  the  less  is  the  danger 
of  domestic  competition  for  the  purchase  of  labor,  for  the  employ 
ment  of  capital,  or  for  the  rent  of  mines ;  but  the  higher  is  the 
price  of  cottons,  and  of  iron,  and  the  greater  the  power  of  the 
already  wealthy  to  carry  on  that  "  warfare"  recommended  by 
Messrs.  Hume  and  Brougham,  and  now  regarded  as  so  essential 
for  destroying  "  foreign  competition  ;"  and  for  gaining  and  keep 
ing  "  possession  of  foreign  markets." 

The  more  perfectly  this  system  is  carried  out,  the  greater, 

necessarily,  becomes  the  centralization  at  home.     The  number  of 

persons  who  can  afford,  "  voluntarily,  "to  make  large  sacrifices  for 

obtaining  possession  of  foreign  markets,  is  small,  and  those  who 

*  See  extract  from  North  British  Review,  p.  240,  ante — note. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        445 

cannot  make  them  are  forced  to  keep  aloof  from  the  trades  in 
which  they  are  likely  to  be  required  —  as  is  the  case  with  all  the 
important  branches  of  English  manufacture.  The  opportunity 
for  employing  small  capitals  is,  therefore,  constantly  diminishing 
— land  becoming  daily  more  and  more  consolidated,  and  trade  as 
steadily  becoming  monopolized.  In  former  times,  small  proper 
ties  were  numerous,  and  the  little  capitalists  found  in  them  little 
savings  banks  to  be  managed  by  themselves,  in  which  they  could 
deposit  all  their  spare  hours  and  half  hours  —  thus  accumulating 
little  fortunes.  From  day  to  day  there  is  a  diminishing  power  of 
direct  .intercourse,  attended  by  an  increasing  necessity  for  the  ser 
vices  of  middlemen ;  and  hence  the  enormous  mass  of  capital 
invested  in  life  insurance  offices,  savings  funds,  &c.  &c. — yielding 
little  to  the  owners,  but  enabling  the  few  who  control  their  move 
ments  to  accumulate  fortunes  for  themselves.  Under  other  cir 
cumstances,  the  real  capitalists  would  manage  their  own  affairs, 
and  would  thus  diminish  the  competition  for  the  loan  of  capital, 
while  increasing  the  competition  for  the  purchase  of  labor  ;  and 
through  the  laborer,  increasing  the  demand  for  the  food  and  other 
raw  materials  yielded  by  the  earth.  The  tendency  of  the  English 
policy,  injurious  abroad,  is  not  less  so  at  home,  for  it  looks  to  the 
conversion  of  the  nation  into  a  mass  of  traders,  surrounded  every 
where  by  a  population  regarded  as  mere  instruments  to  be  used 
by  trade. 

§  4.  With  the  growth  of  the  power  of  association,  or  com 
merce,  the  proportion  of  the  product  going  to  the  middleman  — 
to  the  class  which  stands  between  the  producer  and  the  consumer 
—  tends  to  decline,  and  that  of  the  laborer  to  rise;  with  constant 
tendency  towards  equality  in  the  conditions  of  men.  With  the 
decline  of  commerce,  and  increasing  power  of  the  trader,  the  op 
posite  phenomena  are  everywhere  observed  —  the  inequality  of 
conditions  increasing  steadily,  and  the  laborer  losing  power  over 
himself,  while  the  trader  as  regularly  acquires  power  over  him. 

The  latter  phenomena  are  those  presented  to  view  on  an  exami 
nation  of  English  society.  In  the  days  of  Adam  Smith,  the  land 
holders  of  that  country  numbered  two  hundred  thousand,  whereas 
they  are  now  but  thirty-four  thousand.  The  remainder  have  dis 
appeared,  and  in  their  place  we  have  everywhere  the  hired  laborer. 


446  CHAPTER    XVIH.    §  4. 

Looking  to  the  manufacturing  districts,  they  are  seen  throughout, 
says  a  recent  writer,  to  ' '  present  the  peculiar  spectacle  of  a  small 
and  very  wealthy  class  standing  apart  on  a  great  height,  far  above 
the  level  which  is  occupied  by  the  rest  of  the  population.  The 
connection  between  the  two  consists  wholly  of  those  harsh  and 
pecuniary  ties  which  have  never  yet  had  time  to  become  clothed 
with  the  soft  and  warm  interlacement  of  affectionate  moral  asso 
ciation.  The  work  carried  on  by  the  two  parties  is,"  as  he  con 
tinues,  "  essentially  one  of  co-operation  ;  but  their  moral  attitude 
towards  each  other  is  much  more  one  of  hostility  than  of  friend 
ship."* 

The  gulf  dividing  the  higher  and  lower  classes  of  society  is  an 
ever  widening  one — the  immensity  of  fortune  acquired  by  success 
ful  bankers  and  traders  being  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the  poverty  of 
the  agricultural  class  so  well  described  by  Mr.  Cobden.  The 
accumulations  of  the  past  acquire  daily  more  and  more  control 
over  the  labor  of  the  present ;  and  such  must  continue  ever  to  be 
the  case,  so  long  as  it  shall  be  held  that  the  welfare  of  the  country 
requires  "  a  cheap  and  abundant  supply  of  labor,  "f  This  is  the 
doctrine  of  the  slavery  of  man  as  required  by  the  exigencies  of 
trade ;  and  hence  it  is  that  it  more  and  more  obtains  as  land 
becomes  more  and  more  consolidated  —  and  as  the  great  capitals 
engaged  in  the  several  branches  of  trade  are  more  and  more  en- 


*  LALOR  :  Money  and  Morals,  p.  12. 

I  "  A  great  miners'  strike  has  just  ended  in  Scotland — the  men  giving  in, 
dead  beat,  after  horrible  sufferings,  and  going  back  to  their  work  with  rage 
in  their  hearts.  A  pretty  human  relation  this,  between  man  and  man! 
Mutual  defiance — that  is  the  common  attitude  of  employer  and  employed  in 
these  walks,  especially  in  Scotland,  where  the  feeling  of  personal  independ 
ence  is  stronger  and  keener  than  it  is  here.  The  rise  of  the  great  Scottish 
manufacturers  is  one  of  the  most  marked  features  of  our  times.  The  iron 
masters  are  buying  lands  everywhere,  from  the  Tweed  to  the  Orkneys  — • 
clearing  away  those  old  gentle  houses  which  have  produced  so  many  able 
men — ay,  and  sent  them  to  America,  too — as  your  James  Buchanan  is  there 
to  testify,  and  as  Judge  Haliburton  in  Canada  testifies  likewise  !  One  iron 
family,  the  Bairds,  has  bought  the  Closeburn  of  the  Kirkpatricks,  the  Stitch- 
ell  of  the  Pringles,  and  other  famous  spots.  It  is  the  age  of  iron,  with  a 
vengeance.  But  how  comes  the  working  man,  who  produces  all  this  '  great 
ness,'  to  fare  so  ill?  It  may  be  all  very  fine  that  a  McBuggins  has  bought 
out  a  Graham  or  a  Lindsay,  is  toadying  Buccleuch,  and  swears  a  little  in 
broad  Scotch  in  the  presence  of  ladies  in  a  drawing-room.  But  how  about 
the  poor  McB.,  grimy,  sweaty,  and  sad,  with  a  little,  half-fed  family  growing 
up  heathens  in  the  land  of  Knox  ?  I  want  to  see  something  done  for  him  — 
before  he  tries  to  do  something  irregular  for  himself."  —  Correspondence  of 
the  New  York  Tribune,  June,  1856. 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL    CHANGES   OF   FORM.        447 

abled  to  carry  on  that  "  warfare"  which  looks  to  securing  them  in 
a  monopoly  of  the  privilege  of  purchasing  raw  materials  abroad, 
and  labor  at  home. 

"  The  peasant  knows,"  says  a  recent  English  writer,*  "that  he 
must  die  in  the  same  position  in  which  he  was  born."  Elsewhere 
he  says,  "  the  want  of  small  farms  deprives  the  peasant  of  all  hope 
of  improving  his  condition  in  life."  The  London  Times  assures 
its  readers  that  "once  a  peasant  in  England,  the  man  must  re 
main  a  peasant  for  ever  ;"  and  Mr.  Kay,  after  careful  examination 
of  the  condition  of  the  people  of  Continental  Europe,  assures  his 
readers  that,  as  one  of  the  consequences  of  this  state  of  things,  the 
peasantry  of  England  "  are  more  ignorant,  more  demoralized,  less 
capable  of  helping  themselves,  and  more  pauperized,  than  those 
of  any  other  country  in  Europe,  if  we  except  Russia,  Turkey, 
South  Italy,  and  some  parts  of  the  Austrian  Empire. ' '  f 

Under  such  circumstances,  the  middle  class  tends  gradually  to 
pass  away,  and  its  condition  is  well  expressed  by  the  term  now  so 
frequently  used,  "the  uneasy  class."  The  small  capitalist,  who 
would  elsewhere  purchase  a  piece  of  land,  a  horse  and  cart,  or  a 
machine  of  some  kind  that  would  double  the  productiveness  of 
his  labor  and  increase  its  reward,  is,  as  has  above  been  shown, 
forced  to  make  his  investments  in  savings  banks  or  life  insurance 
offices,  to  be  by  them  lent  out  on  mortgage  at  three  per  cent. ; 
whereas,  he  could  earn  fifty  per  cent,  could  he  be  permitted  to 
use  his  capital  himself.  There  is,  therefore,  a  perpetual  strife 
for  life,  and  each  man  is,  as  has  been  said,  "endeavoring  to 
snatch  the  piece  of  bread  from  his  neighbor's  mouth."  The  atmo 
sphere  of  England  is  one  of  gloom.  Every  one  is  anxious  for  the 
future,  for  himself  or  his  children  —  and  this  is  a  necessary  conse 
quence  of  the  system  that  looks  to  increasing  the  difficulties  stand 
ing  in  the  way  of  commerce. 

§  5.  The  more  perfect  the  power  of  association,  the  greater  is 
the  tendency  towards  equality  of  condition,  resulting  from  the 
development  of  the  mental  faculties — and  towards  having  the 
chain  of  society  perfect  in  all  its  links.  The  less  that  power,  the 
greater  is  the  tendency  towards  inequality,  resulting  from  the 
development  of  mind  in  a  single  portion  of  society,  and  the  sub- 
*  KAY  :  Social  Condition  of  England  and  of  Europe,  vol.  i.  70.  f  Ibid.  359. 


448  CHAPTER    XVIII.     §  6. 

stitution,  in  the  other,  of  brute  force  for  mind  ;  and  towards  hav 
ing  the  laborer  become  a  tool  in  the  hands  of  those  who  desire 
to  profit  by  his  efforts.  Mere  animal  power  is,  as  we  are  told, 
what  is  required  in  the  English  system ;  and  hence  it  is,  that  there 
so  little  progress  has  been  made  in  the  development  of  the  artis 
tic  faculty,  while  everywhere  throughout  the  continent  of  Europe 
it  is  seen  to  be  so  rapid.*  Centralization  is  destructive  of  the 
mental  power,  for  it  looks  to  cheapening  labor  abroad  and  at 
home,  and  to  diminishing  the  ability  to  purchase  things  requiring 
taste  and  skill  in  their  preparation.  The  market  for  such  commo 
dities  afforded  by  Ireland,  by  Portugal,  by  Jamaica,  or  by  India, 
is  not  now  one-tenth  as  great  as  it  was  half  a  century  since  ;  and, 
small  as  it  is,  it  declines  from  year  to  year  —  thus  affording  proof 
conclusive  of  the  disadvantage  of  the  system,  leaving  moral  con 
siderations  altogether  out  of  view.  The  difficulty  now  complained 
of  in  the  English  journals  is  but  the  necessary  result  of  a  policy  which 
requires  low-priced  labor — that  being  always  the  labor  of  a  slave. 

§  6.  The  more  rapid  the  circulation  of  the  blood  throughout  the 
human  body,  the  greater  is  the  tendency  to  have  each  and  every 
part  thereof  attain  its  full  development,  and  the  more  harmonious 
is  the  action  of  the  whole.  The  more  languid  the  circulation,  the 
greater  is  the  liability  to  disease  and  death.  So  is  it  with  socie- 
tary  bodies.  The  rapid  circulation  of  Greece  was  shown  in  the 
creation  of  numerous  local  centres,  and  in  the  existence  of  a  spirit 
of  association  for  all  useful  purposes  that  had  never  before  been 
known  ;  but  when,  in  later  times,  Athens  had  made  herself  the 
sole  centre  of  a  system  of  subject  towns  and  cities,  the  rapidity  of 
the  circulation  declined,  and  though  the  great  city  itself  became 
from  day  to  day  more  splendid,  its  splendor  was  but  the  evidence 
of  growing  slavery — producing  disease  that  was  to  end  in  death. 

In  earlier  times,  the  British  isles  presented  to  view  numerous 
local  centres  —  London,  Edinburgh,  and  Dublin  being  the  seats 
of  the  English,  Scottish,  and  Irish  parliaments ;  while  local 

*  "We  are  perpetually  trying  to  separate  the  workman  and  the  work. 
We  like  one  man  to  think,  and  another  to  do;  but  the  two  will  never  really 
flourish  apart:  thought  must  govern  action,  and  action  must  stimulate 
thought,  or  the  mass  of  society  will  always  be  as  it  is  now,  composed  of 
'morbid  thinkers  and  miserable  workers.'  It  is  only  by  labor  that  thought 
can  be  made  healthy,  and  only  b3*  thought  that  labor  can  be  made  happy." 
— North  British  Review,  May,  1854.  See  note  to  page  239,  ante. 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL    CHANGES    OF    FORM.        449 

authorities  throughout  the  several  kingdoms  controlled  the  man 
agement  of  the  affairs  of  the  various  counties  into  which  they  were 
divided,  and  towns  and  cities  which  so  much  abounded.  One  by 
one,  however,  they  have  disappeared — Edinburgh  and  Dublin 
having  long  since  ceased  to  be  more  than  mere  provincial  towns, 
and  smaller  towns  and  cities  having  found  the  direction  of  their 
affairs  gradually  passing  into  the  hands  of  government  commis 
sioners,  directing  all  the  local  operations  from  the  immediate 
neighborhood  of  the  sole  Parliament  of  a  consolidated  kingdom. 
Charged,  as  is  this  central  legislature,  at  one  moment  with  the 
decision  of  questions  vitally  affecting  the  interests  of  the  hundred 
millions  of  the  people  of  India  —  at  a  second,  with  others  of  high 
importance  to  the  people  of  Canada,  Australia,  or  the  Ionian 
Islands  —  and  at  a  third,  with  the  regulation  of  the  lodging- 
houses,  or  the  hackney  fares,  of  London,  or  the  sewerage  of 
towns  and  villages  throughout  the  kingdom — it  is  scarcely  matter 
of  surprise  that  legislation  now,  as  we  are  told,  "involves  an 
amount  of  drudgery  which  many  men,  best  qualified  in  other 
respects  for  the  duties  of  Parliament,  cannot,  and  will  not,  under 
take.  ' '  *  Under  such  circumstances  it  is,  that  Parliament  is 
besieged  by  applicants  for  railroad  and  other  privileges,  the 
grants  of  which  are  to  be  obtained  only  by  aid  of  consummate 
skill  and  management,  by  the  possession  of  which  qualities  agents 
now  accumulate  enormous  fortunes  ;  so  that  the  middleman  sys 
tem,  which  always  attends  the  decline  of  local  centres,  is  thus 
extended  to  the  affairs  of  legislation.  Thus  far,  the  expenditures 
preliminary  to  the  making  of  roads  have  amounted,  as  it  is  said, 
to  more  than  a  hundred  millions  of  dollars  ;  and  the  result  of  the 
system  is  seen  in  the  establishment  of  powerful  combinations, 
"  versed  in  all  the  dodges  of  the  committee-rooms,  and  possessed 
of  funds  and  agencies  sufficient  for  any  contest  "  —  giving  them 
"full  command  of  the  lands  and  property  of  only  quiet  respect 
ability  and  limited  means."  "For  nineteen  men  out  of  twenty 

*  "Our  legislators  are  bound  to  spend  half  their  time  in  unriddling  the 
mysteries  of  the  Puddle  Dock  Company  against  Jenkins  about  the  upper  cor 
ner  of  a  two-acre  field,  in  detecting  the  glosses  which  would  mislead  them  in 
respect  of  a  turn  in  a  road,  the  height  of  a  bridge,  or  the  outfall  of  a  drain 
age  ;  and  then  we  expect  them  to  go  straightway  to  just  determinations  on 
our  colonial  administration,  the  government  of  India,  the  conservation  of  our 
own  constitutional  principles,  or  the  general  policy  of  Europe.1' — Westminster 
Review,  January,  1854:  article,  Constitutional  Reform. 


450  CHAPTER   XVIII.    §  T. 

to  oppose  such  a  body  in  the  costly  litigation  of  Parliament,  is,'' 
as  we  are  told,  "  entirely  out  of  the  question,  the  even  balance  of 
right  being,"  as  the  writer  adds,  "as  effectually  clogged  as  if 
Dame  Justice  herself  were  unhoodwinked,  and  held  it  according 
to  the  greatest  fee."* 

While  India  or  Ireland,  Canada  or  Australia,  with  difficult) 
obtains  a  hearing,  strictly  local  affairs  are  almost  entirely  neg 
lected.  Therefore  it  is,  that  the  management  of  the  affairs  of  the 
country  passes  gradually  under  the  control  of  commissions  which 
are  being  created  from  year  to  year — superseding  the  local  autho 
rities  by  whom  they  before  had  been  administered. f  Centraliza 
tion  grows,  thus,  on  every  hand.  But  recently  it  was  proposed 
to  make  of  the  government  a  great  life  insurance  office  —  taking 
into  its  hands  all  the  property  now  administered  by  the  numerous 
private  companies.  This,  however,  would  be  only  another  step 
in  the  same  direction  in  which  England  so  long  has  walked.  The 
existence  of  those  companies,  on  their  present  extended  scale,  is 
due  entirely  to  an  erroneous  policy,  based  on  the  idea  of  cheap 
raw  materials  and  cheap  labor  —  that  policy  which  consolidates 
the  land,  fills  the  poor-houses,  and  enables  a  few  people  of  great 
wealth  so  to  control  the  movements  of  trade  as  to  drive  from  it 
all  the  people  whose  means  are  moderate,  and  who  cannot  afford 
to  waste  hundreds  of  thousands  of  pounds  in  the  effort  to  annihi 
late  competition  at  home  and  abroad. 

§T.  Man  is  ever  a  creature  of  progress,  either  upward  or  down 
ward.  He  is  never  stationary.  Every  step  towards  centralization 
is  but  the  preparation  for  a  new  and  greater  one  ;  and  therefore 

*  Westminster  Review,  January,  1854. 

f  "The  land  of  twenty  neighbors  wants  common  drainage  or  a  common 
road.  Nothing  but  an  act  of  Parliament,  to  be  obtained  at  vast  cost,  and 
three  hundred  miles  from  the  spot,  can  effect  the  improvement.  The  im 
provement  is  therefore  never  made,  and  even  the  dream  of  it  is  repressed  as 
a  dream ;  and  then  come  centralizers  and  doctrinaires,  with  all  kinds  of  vitu 
peration  of  local  authorities  and  local  owners  for  their  want  of  knowledge 
and  interest  in  such  matters  :  straightway,  a  great  metropolitan  department 
is  set  up  to  supply — to  pump  artificially — to  the  provinces  the  energy  which 
the  system  of  Parliament  itself  has  repressed  at  its  natural  fountain.  On 
this  follow  differences  between  provincial  feeling  and  metropolitan  dictation, 
and  on  that  a  new  contraction  of  whatever  interest  was  felt  in  the  subject 
before.  Thus,  as  alternate  cause  and  effect,  compact  bureaucracy  tends 
constantly  to  firmer  establishment ;  and,  but  for  causes  yet  too  strong  for  it, 
we  should  verge  rapidly  to  the  chilling  and  dangerous  system  of  Austria  and 
France,  any  merely  electoral  reform  notwithstanding." — Ibid. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        451 

is  it  that  there  has  been  more  progress  in  that  direction  in  the  last 
twenty  years  than  had  been  made  in  the  preceding  century.* 

Much  was  hoped  for  from  the  passage  of  the  Reform  Act,  but 
it  has  failed  to  accomplish  the  good  that  was  to  be  expected  ;  and 
for  the  reason,  that  the  whole  policy  of  the  country  looks  towards 
the  aggrandizement  of  trade  at  the  expense  of  commerce.  Instead 
of  putting  "the  actual  franchise  in  the  hands  of  the  most  inde 
pendent  and  the  most  intelligent  class  of  the  community  —  the 
artisan  class" — it  has,  says  Mr.  Toulmin  Smith,  put  it  into  those 
"of  a  class  which,  though  most  mistakenly  and  unwisely,  is  actu 
ally  and  increasingly,  owing  to  the  growing  influence  of  centrali 
zation,  the  leas*  independent  of  any — namely,  that  of  small  traders 
and  retail  shopkeepers."  f 

The  remedy  having  failed,  we  are  now  told,  and  by  a  distin 
guished  writer,  that  the  constitution  of  Parliament  must  be  so 
radically  changed  as  to  enable  the  ministry  for  the  time  being  to 
"  command  a  majority" — and  thus  avoid  the  necessity  for  making 
troublesome  explanations  in  the  House  of  Commons.  "A  strong 
government,"  as  we  are  assured,  is  the  one  thing  needful;  and 
that  it  may  exist,  a  number  of  new  seats  should  be  created,  to  be 
filled,  not  by  the  people,  but  by  those  who  are,  or  should  be,  the 
people's  servants.  Nothing  has  yet  occurred  that  so  clearly 
marks  the  growing  centralization  of  England  as  the  publication 
of  the  pamphlet  here  referred  to.  J 

§  8.  "  The  more  imperfect  a  being,"  says  Goethe,  "the  more 
do  its  individual  parts  resemble  each  other,  and  the  more  do 
those  parts  resemble  the  whole.  The  more  perfect  a  body,  the 
more  dissimilar  become  the  parts.  In  the  former  case,  the  parts 

*  "Here  we  see  the  greatest  danger  to  English  society:  the  evil  is  far 
from  being  so  great  as  it  is  with  the  continental  nations ;  but  England  has 
already  arrived  upon  the  fatal  slope.  It  is  time  for  her  statesmen  to  be  well 
aware  that  the  universal  and  immoderate  desire  of  public  employment  is  the 
worst  of  social  maladies.  It  spreads  through  the  whole  body  of  the  nation 
a  venal  and  servile  temper,  which  does  not,  however,  exclude,  even  in  the 
case  of  those  best  provided  for,  the  spirit  of  faction  and  of  anarchy.  It 
creates  a  posse  of  starvelings  capable  of  any  extravagance  in  the  desire  to 
satisfy  their  appetite,  and  fit  for  any  meanness  as  soon  as  its  cravings  are 
appeased.  A  people  of  solicitors  is  the  lowest  of  people — there  is  no  humi 
liation  that  it  may  not  be  brought  to  submit  to."  —  MONTALEMBERT:  De 
I'A  venir  Politique  de  UAnghterre  •  quoted  in  Blackicood's  Magazine,  May,  1856. 

•}•  Local  Self- Government,  p.  242. 

J  W.  R.  GREG:    The  Way  Out,  London,  1855. 


452  CHAPTER   XVIII.    §  8. 

are  more  or  less  a  repetition  of  the  whole  ;  in  the  latter,  they  are 
totally  unlike  the  whole."  Tried  by  this  standard,  English  society 
is  becoming  more  and  more  imperfect,  as  it  becomes  from  year  to 
year  more  and  more  a  mere  body  of  traders,  surrounded  every 
where  by  men  who  work  for  wages.  The  little  landed  proprietor 
has  disappeared.  The  little  capitalist  becomes  an  annuitant.  The 
little  daily  journal  yields  place  to  the  gigantic  Times.  Centrali 
zation  increases  steadily,  and  with  every  stage  of  its  increase  the 
parts  more  and  more  resemble  each  other,  and  the  more  does  the 
whole  resemble  its  parts — trade  and  transportation  becoming,  from 
year  to  year,  more  and  more  the  objects  of  all  the  aspirations  of  a 
government  whose  policy  is  "  determined  by  considering  what  is 
for  the  moment  Expedient,  without  admitting  the  previous  inquiry 
whether  there  was  a  claim  of  Right."* 

The  higher  the  organization — the  more  perfect  the  development 
of  the  various  faculties  of  the  man — the  more  complete  is  the  power 
of  self-government.  This  is  as  true  of  societies  as  we  see  it  to  be 
of  individuals.  The  more  perfect  the  power  of  association,  and 
the  more  complete  the  development  of  the  various  faculties  of  its 
various  members,  the  more  entire  is  its  power  to  control  its  own 
action  ;  and  the  less  is  it  liable  to  outside  influence. 

In  England,  as  we  see,  the  power  of  association  declines,  and 
local  self-government  tends  to  disappear — centralization  certainly 

*  "  The  English  government  is  encroaching  and  tyrannical  where  it  is 
strong,  as  in  Asia  and  in  the  colonies,  but  is  cringing  and  complaisant  to 
tyrants  in  Europe,  where  it  is  weak.  Those  who  have  defended  the  opening 
of  Mazzini's  letters  by  Sir  James  Graham,  will  never  convince  us  that  the 
English  cabinet  was  providing  for  English  interests.  The  belief  that  this 
was  done  to  gratify  the  hateful  governments  of  Naples  and  of  Austria,  and 
that  it  occasioned  the  death  of  the  brothers  Bandiera,  has  never  been  refuted. 
When  Austria,  in  1846,  invaded  and  overthrew  the  Republic  of  Cracow  —  a 
republic  established  and  guaranteed  by  the  treaty  of  Vienna — Lord  Palmer- 
ston  refused  even  to  protest  against  it,  and  has  since  continued  to  prate  of 
the  sacredness  of  that  treaty  as  often  as  it  is  convenient  to  the  despotic 
powers  against  the  liberties  of  the  nations.  What  is  meant  by  '  protection,' 
was  once  more  manifested.  But  what  was  this,  compared  to  our  destruction 
of  the  liberties  of  Portugal  in  1847,  while  Lord  John  Russell,  too,  was  prime 
minister  ?  Of  Right,  he  made  no  more  account  towards  Portugal,  then  ten 
years  previously  towards  Canada.  The  sole  question  was,  « Is  it  convenient 
to  us  to  allow  a  just  revolution  to  succeed  in  Portugal?'  and  the  reply  was, 
'  No  ;  for  the  kingdom  of  Sardinia  is  in  process  of  reformation ;  Switzerland 
is  excited  by  internal  movements;  Prussia,  having  at  length  got  a  parliament, 
is  pushing  its  advantage  against  the  king ;  moreover,  there  is  a  reforming 
pope  at  Rome ;  and  if  revolution  succeeds  in  Portugal,  the  example  will  be  fol 
lowed  in  many  other  places  :  therefore,  right  or  wrong,  it  must  be  suppress 
ed.'  " —  Westminster  Review,  July,  1855  ;  article,  International  Immorality. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        453 

and  rapidly  taking  its  place.  Hence  it  is  that  we  are  called  to 
remark  a  constantly  growing  weakness,  indicated  by  an  increased 
necessity  for  modifying  her  policy,  in  obedience  to  the  dictation 
of  other  nations.  The  change  in  the  navigation  laws  was  forced 
upon  her — first,  by  the  resistance  of  the  United  States,  and  then, 
by  that  of  Prussia  and  other  powers. 

So,  too,  was  it  with  regard  to  the  question  of  protection.  For 
seventy  years,  and  even  down  to  1819,  the  duties  on  foreign  manu 
factures  had  steadily  been  increased.  In  that  and  the  five  follow 
ing  years,  several  of  the  communities  of  Europe  adopted  measures 
looking  to  resistance,  while  in  the  last  of  them  was  passed  the 
first  American  tariff  based  upon  the  idea  of  bringing  the  farmer 
and  the  artisan  nearer  together  —  and  thus  approximating  the 
prices  of  raw  materials  and  manufactured  commodities.  To  this 
was  due  the  change  of  measures  commenced  by  Mr.  Huskisson  in 
1825 — a  change,  however,  looking  steadfastly  towards  the  accom 
plishment  of  the  one  great  object,  that  of  cheapening  all  the  raw 
materials  of  manufacture,  whether  corn,  cotton,  or  labor.  The 
successful  resistance  of  Russia — the  formation  of  the  German  Zoll- 
Verein — and  the  American  tariff  of  1842,  were  the  causes  of  the 
total  change  of  policy  that  occurred  in  1846.  So,  likewise,  was 
it  with  the  sugar  duties.  The  emancipated  negroes  of  Jamaica 
had  been  assured  of  protection  against  slave-grown  sugar,  yet 
Brazil  compelled  a  violation  of  the  well-understood  agreement. 
The  Crimean  war  is  scarcely  to  be  regarded  as  having  been  a  vo 
luntary  act  on  the  part  of  the  government  —  any  more  than  is  the 
peace  that  has  recently  been  made.  Turning  to  India,  we  find  the 
government  making  the  most  unjust  of  wars,  because  it  "  cannot 
afford  "  to  let  it  appear,  even  for  a  moment  to  let  it  be  doubted, 
that  its  hold  on  India  rests  "  upon  the  might  of  the  conqueror."* 

*  "From  Lord  Dalhousie's  Minute  of  February  12,  1852: — 
"  The  British  power  in  India  cannot  safely  afford  to  exhibit  even  a  tempo 
rary  appearance  of  inferiority.  Whilst  I  should  be  reluctant  to  believe  that 
our  empire  in  India  has  no  stay  but  the  sword  alone,  it  is  vain  to  doubt  that 
our  hold  must  mainly  rest  upon  the  might  of  the  conqueror,  and  must  be 
maintained  by  that  power.  The  government  of  India  cannot,  consistently 
with  its  own  safety,  appear  for  one  day  in  an  attitude  of  inferiority;  or  hope 
to  maintain  peace  and  submission  among  the  numberless  princes  and  people 
embraced  within  the  vast  circuit  of  the  empire,  if,  for  one  day,  it  give  coun 
tenance  to  a  doubt  of  the  absolute  superiority  of  its  arms,  and  of  its  continued 
resolution  to  assert  it." — Blue  Book,  presented  to  Parliament  June  4,  1852,  p. 
66:  quoted  in  Westminster  Review,  for  July,  1855,  p.  35. 


454  CHAPTER   XVIII.    §  8. 

The  removal  of  restrictions  upon  trade,  and  the  repeal  of  the 
navigation  laws,  are  said,  however,  to  have  been  a  consequence 
of  improved  modes  of  thought,  and  to  have  been  made  in  defer 
ence  to  the  advancing  spirit  of  the  age.  Were  this  really  so,  a 
similar  spirit  might  be  manifested  in  other  directions ;  but  such, 
unhappily,  is  not  the  case.  Nothing  could  be  more  unjust  than 
the  taxation  imposed  upon  all  the  correspondence  between  Ame 
rica  and  the  continent  of  Europe ;  yet  is  it  persisted  in,  in  spite 
of  all  remonstrances.  The  people  of  the  West  India  islands  have, 
for  years,  and  in  vain,  petitioned  for  such  an  alteration  of  the 
duties  as  would  enable  them  to  refine  their  own  sugar.  The 
British  colonies  of  the  continent  and  the  West  Indies  but 
recently  determined  to  establish  between  themselves  a  perfect 
reciprocity  —  abolishing  all  duties  upon  their  respective  produc 
tions  ;  and  in  so  doing  only  desired  to  carry  into  full  effect  the 
views  so  strenuously  urged  upon  the  government  of  the  United 
States  in  reference  to  the  —  so-called  —  Reciprocity  Treaty,  then 
just  made  with  Canada,  Upon  submitting  the  question,  however, 
to  the  consideration  of  the  home  government,  the  answer  was,  that 
her  Majesty's  government  trusted  that  they  would  ''not  be  asked 
to  submit  for  her  Majesty's  approval  acts  or  ordinances  giving 
effect  to  measures  of  that  character,"  as  "it  would  be  inconsist 
ent  with  the  imperial  policy  of  free  trade  "  !  * 

The  Spanish  people  find  themselves  greatly  aggrieved  by  the 
use  of  Gibraltar  as  a  smuggling  depot,  yet  is  there  manifested  no 
disposition  to  make  a  change  in  that  respect;  although,  when  the 
place  was  ceded,  it  was  made  a  part  of  the  treaty  stipulations 
that  it  should  never  be  used  for  such  a  purpose.  Spanish  com 
merce  is  thus  sacrificed  to  the  promotion  of  British  trade. 

The  people  of  China  being  forced,  despite  of  all  opposition  on 
the  part  of  their  government,  to  receive  from  fifteen  to  twenty 
millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  opium  annually,  the  result  is  seen  in 
growing  intemperance  —  in  an  enormous  waste  of  life  —  and  in  a 
tendency  towards  the  resolution  of  Chinese  society  into  its  original 
elements,  to  be  followed  by  universal  anarchy ;  yet  is  Hong  Kong 
retained  as  a  necessary  appendage  to  the  Indian  Empire,  because 
"expediency"  requires  the  carrying  out  of  measures  utterly  un 
justifiable  on  the  ground  of  "right."  Such  being  the  course  of 
*  Despatch  of  Sir  William  Molesworth  to  the  Governor  of  Barbadoes. 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL    CHANGES   OF    FORM.        4f)5 

proceeding  towards  the  weaker  communities  of  the  earth,  the 
adoption  of  any  other  towards  the  stronger  ones  can  be  attri 
buted  only  to  a  diminution  of  power  to  pursue  that  which  had  so 
long  been  practised. 

§  9.  Action  and  reaction  are  equal  and  opposite — the  ball  that 
stops  another  in  its  course  finding  itself  retarded,  if  not  entirely 
arrested,  in  its  own  motion  towards  the  point  to  which  it  had 
been  directed.  So  is  it  with  communities.  Whatever  movement 
of  France  tends  to  stop  the  circulation  of  Germany  or  Italy,  tends 
equally  to  produce  the  same  effect  at  home  ;  and  Frenchmen  suf 
fer  when  the  armies  of  France  destroy  the  commerce  of  her  neigh 
bors.  So  is  it,  too,  with  England,  in  reference  to  Ireland,  India, 
the  West  Indies,  Spain,  and  all  other  countries.  The  real  inte 
rests  of  each  and  every  community  are  to  be  promoted  by  the 
adoption  of  measures  tending  to  produce  increase  of  commerce  in 
the  bosom  of  each  and  every  other  —  thereby  increasing  the  value 
of  man — diminishing  the  value  of  all  the  commodities  required  for 
his  use  —  facilitating  the  development  of  intellect  —  and  thus  en 
abling  men  more  and  more  to  combine  their  efforts  with  those  of 
their  neighbor-men  for  obtaining  that  power  over  nature  which  con 
stitutes  wealth ;  and  therefore  is  it  that  an  enlightened  self-inte 
rest  would  prompt  each  and  all  to  carry  into  the  management  of 
public  affairs  the  same  spirit  that  should  animate  every  Christian 
man  in  his  dealings  with  his  fellow-men. 

Such,  however  —  and  most  unhappily  —  has  not  been  the  spirit 
in  which  the  English  policy  has  been  directed.  Purely  selfish,  it 
has  sought  to  annihilate  commerce  everywhere,  and  everywhere  to 
substitute  trade — thereby  lessening  the  value  of  man  —  increasing 
the  value  of  all  the  commodities  he  needed  for  his  purposes  — 
arresting  the  development  of  his  intellect  —  preventing  him  from 
obtaining  command  over  the  forces  of  nature  —  and  thus  keeping 
him  in  that  state  of  poverty  which  makes  him  a  mere  instrument 
in  the  hands  of  the  soldier  and  the  trader.  For  the  accomplish 
ment  of  these  objects,  the  world  has  been  belted  round  with  colo 
nies — alliances  have  been  made  and  broken — thousands  of  millions 
of  pounds  have  been  spent  on  ruinous  wars  *  —  millions  upon 

*  "Every  rock  in  the  ocean  where  a  cormorant  can  perch  is  occupied  by 
British  troops  —  has  a  governor,  deputy-governor,  storekeeper,  and  deputy- 


45 G  CHAPTER    XVIII.    §  9. 

millions  of  lives  have  been  sacrificed ;  and  the  result  is  seen  in  the 
fact  that  she  now  stands  emphatically  alone  among  the  ruins  she 
has  made. 

Having  stopped  the  motion  of  society  in  Portugal,  her  old 
and  faithful  ally  now  hangs  upon  her  hands,  useless  even  for  the 
purposes  of  trade.  So  is  it  with  Turkey,  and  so,  too,  with  the 
Indies  of  the  West  and  of  the  East,  both  of  which  are  causes  of 
anxiety,  and  not  sources  of  profit.  Coming  nearer  home,  Ireland 
— a  country  abounding  in  all  the  elements  of  wealth  —  presents  to 
view,  and  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  world,  a  nation 
gradually  disappearing  from  the  earth  in  the  midst  of  the  pro- 
foundest  peace.  Looking  into  Scotland,  we  see  the  land  becom 
ing  consolidated,  and  its  occupants  being  everywhere  expelled  to 
make  room  for  she£p  —  while  almost  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
people  around  are  in  constant  danger  of  starvation.*  Turning 

storekeeper,  and  will  soon  have  an  archdeacon  and  a  bishop ;  military  col 
leges  with  thirty-four  professors,  educating  seventeen  ensigns  per  annum  — 
being  half  an  ensign  for  each  professor  —  with  every  species  of  nonsense, 
athletic,  sartorial,  and  plumigerous.  A  'just  and  necessary'  war  costs  this 
country  about  one  hundred  pounds  a  minute ;  whip-cord,  fifteen  thousand 
pounds ;  and  tape,  seven  thousand  pounds ;  lace  for  drummers  and  fifers, 
nineteen  thousand  pounds  ;  a  pension  for  one  man  who  has  broken  his  head 
at  the  Pole — to  another  who  has  shattered  his  leg  at  the  Equator ;  subsidies 
to  Persia  ;  secret-service  money  to  Thibet ;  an  annuity  to  Lady  Henry  Some 
body  and  her  seven  daughters,  the  husband  being  shot  at  some  place  where 
we  never  ought  to  have  had  any  soldiers  at  all,  and  the  elder  brother  return 
ing  four  brothers  to  Parliament  —  such  a  scene  of  extravagance,  corruption, 
and  expense  as  must  paralyze  the  industry  and  mar  the  fortunes  of  the  most 
industrious,  spirited  people  that  ever  existed."  —  Sidney  Smith. 

*  "Recent  inquiry  has  discovered  that  even  there,  in  districts  once 
famous  for  fine  men  and  gallant  soldiers,  the  inhabitants  have  degenerated 
into  a  meagre  and  stunted  race.  In  the  healthiest  situations,  on  hillsides 
fronting  the  sea,  the  faces  of  their  famished  children  are  as  thin  and  pale  as 
they  could  be  in  the  foul  atmosphere  of  a  London  alley.  Still  more  deplora 
ble' are  the  scenes  exhibited  in  the  Western  Highlands,  especially  on  the 
coasts  and  in  the  adjoining  islands.  A  large  population  has  there  been  as 
sembled,  so  ill  provided  with  any  means  of  support,  that  during  part  of 
almost  every  year  from  45,000  to  80,000  of  them  are  in  a  state  of  destitu 
tion,  and  entirely  dependent  upon  charity.  Many  of  the  heads  of  families 
hold  crofts  from  four  to  seven  acres  in  extent,  but  these,  notwithstanding 
their  small  size,  and  the  extreme  barrenness  of  the  soil,  have  often  two, 
three,  and  sometimes  even  four,  families  upon  them."  *  *  *  * 

"  Of  course,  they  live  most  wretchedly.  Potatoes  are  the  usual  food,  for 
oatmeal  is  considered  a  luxury,  to  be  reserved  for  highdays  and  holidays, 
but  even  potatoes  are  not  raised  in  sufficient  abundance.  The  year's  stock 
is  generally  exhausted  before  the  succeeding  crop  is  ripe,  and  the  poor  are 
then  often  in  a  most  desperate  condition,  for  the  poor-law  is  a  dead  letter  in 
the  north  of  Scotland,  and  the  want  of  a  legal  provision  for  the  necessitous 
is  but  ill  supplied  by  the  spontaneous  contributions  of  the  land-owners."  — 
THORNTON  :  Over- Population  and  its  Remedy,  pp.  74,  76. 


OP   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        457 

from  the  land  to  the  great  trading  city,  Glasgow,  we  meet  there 
with  the  people  who  have  been  expelled  —  living  in  a  state  of 
destitution  not  exceeded  even  in  Ireland.*  Arriving  in  England 
herself,  we  find  an  overgrown  metropolis  and  a  great  trading  city, 
between  which  points  is  to  be  found  nearly  all  the  circulation  of 
the  empire.  Such  are  the  unhappy  consequences  of  mistaking 
trade,  ever  warlike  and  exhausting,  for  the  always  peaceful  and 
invigorating  commerce. 

§  10.  Adopting  as  her  motto,  "  ships,  colonies,  and  commerce," 
England  has  glorified  the  former,  and  has,  therefore,  sought  every 
where  to  magnify  the  obstacles  standing  in  the  way  of  her  own  im 
provement  and  that  of  the  world.  To  increase  the  number  of  her 
ships,  she  required  colonies,  and  to  obtain  colonies  she  has 
involved  herself  in  almost  endless  wars.f  To  find  employment 
for  ships,  she  made  herself  the  contractor  for  supplying  negro 
slaves  to  the  Spaniards ;  and  to  enable  herself  to  obtain  supplies 
of  slaves,  she  stirred  up  wars  in  every  part  of  Africa.  As 
Portugal,  Turkey,  and  Ireland  became  more  and  more  impo 
verished  and  exhausted,  she  became  more  and  more  dependent 
upon  India ;  and  as  India  became  more  and  more  exhausted,  it 
became  more  and  more  necessary  to  deplete  China  by  help  of 
opium  —  and  hence  the  opium  war.  As  her  earlier  India  posses 
sions  became  more  and  more  impoverished,  troops  were  more 

*  "The  wynds  in  Glasgow  comprise  a  fluctuating  population  of  from 
15,000  to  30,000  persons.  This  quarter  consists  of  a  labyrinth  of  lanes,  out 
of  which  numberless  entrances  lead  into  small  square  courts,  each  with  a 
dunghill  reeking  in  the  centre.  Revolting  as  was  the  outward  appearance 
of  these  places,  I  was  little  prepared  for  the  filth  and  destitution  within.  In 
some  of  these  lodging-rooms  (visited  at  night)  we  found  a  whole  lair  of  hu 
man  beings  littered  along  the  floor,  sometimes  fifteen  and  twenty,  some 
clothed  and  some  naked ;  men,  women,  and  children  huddled  promiscuously 
together.  Their  bed  consisted  of  a  layer  of  musty  straw  intermixed  with 
rags.  There  was  generally  little  or  no  furniture  in  these  places  —  the  sole 
article  of  comfort  was  a  fire.  Thieving  and  prostitution  constitute  the  main 
sources  of  the  revenue  of  this  population.  No  pains  seem  to  be  taken  to 
purge  this  Augean  pandemonium  —  this  nucleus  of  crime,  filth,  and  pesti 
lence — existing  in  the  centre  of  the  second  city  in  the  empire."  —  SYMONDS: 
Report  on  the  Hand-loom  Weavers. 

|  "  The  history  of  the  colonies  for  many  years  is  that  of  a  series  of  loss, 
and  of  the  destruction  of  capital ;  and  if  to  the  many  millions  of  private 
capital  which  have  been  thus  wasted,  were  added  some  hundred  millions 
that  have  been  raised  by  British  taxes,  and  spent  on  account  of  the  colonies, 
the  total  loss  of  wealth  to  the  British  public  which  the  colonies  have  occa 
sioned,  would  appear  to  be  quite  enormous."  —  Parnell. 

YOL.  I.— 30 


458  CHAPTER    XVIII.    §  10. 

readily  obtained  for  carrying  war  into  Scinde,  Afghanistan,  the 
Punjab,  and  Burmah.  As  Jamaica  declined,  the  cooley  trade 
was  established.  Trade  and  war  thus  travel  always  in  company 
with  each  other  —  always  exhausting  the  earlier  fields  of  action, 
and  always  compelled  to  seek  for  new  ones,  with  constant  increase 
in  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  of  place,  and  constant  de 
cline  in  the  condition  of  man ;  whereas,  commerce  tends  always 
towards  diminution  of  that  necessity,  with  constantly  accelerated 
improvement  in  his  condition. 

Centralization  in  both  the  material  and  social  world  is  destruc 
tive  of  the  power  of  motion.  Annihilate  the  local  attraction  of 
the  planets,  and  the  splendor  of  the  sun  would  for  the  moment  be 
increased,  but  that  splendor  would  be  but  the  precursor  of  ruin, 
and  of  the  total  destruction  of  the  individuality  of  the  sun  him 
self;  and  so  precisely  must  it  be  in  the  affairs  of  nations. 
That  centralization  grows  with  the  extension  of  empire,  is  a  fact 
proved  by  all  the  chapters  in  the  world's  history;  and  therefore 
was  it  most  justly  said  by  one  of  England's  greatest  writers,  that 
"  extended  empire,  like  extended  gold,  exchanges  solid  strength 
for  feeble  splendor"  —  centralization  bringing  in  its  train  depopu 
lation,  slavery,  and  death  ;  and  producing  a  necessity  for  inventing 
a  theory  of  over-population,  whereby  the  rich  and  powerful  may 
be  enabled  to  comfort  themselves  with  the  belief  that  the  poverty 
and  wretchedness  with  which  they  find  themselves  surrounded,  are 
to  be  traced  to  the  blunder  of  an  all-wise,  all-merciful,  and  all- 
powerful  Creator. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL    CHANGES   OP   FORM.        459 


CHAPTER    XIX. 

THE    SAME    SUBJECT    CONTINUED. 

§  1.  BY  help  of  association  and  combination  with  his  fellows, 
man  obtains  power  over  nature  —  substituting  steam,  electricity, 
and  other  forces,  for  the  human  hand,  and  passing  from  the  culti 
vation  of  the  poor  soils  of  the  hills  to  that  of  the  rich  ones  of  the 
river  bottoms  ;  with  constant  increase  in  the  facility  of  obtaining 
the  food,  clothing,  and  shelter  required  for  his  nourishment  and 
support. 

To  enable  them  to  associate  and  combine,  there  must  be  diver 
sity  in  the  modes  of  employment — developing  the  various  faculties 
of  individual  men,  fitting  them  for  association,  and  producing  that 
wealth  of  intellect  by  means  of  which  they  are  enabled  to  direct  those 
forces  to  their  service.  Commerce  grows  with  the  development  of 
intellect  and  the  growth  of  wealth.  The  more  rapid  its  growth, 
the  greater  is  the  tendency  towards  having  matter  take  upon  itself 
the  forms  in  which  it  is  best  fitted  for  the  purposes  of  man  —  the 
more  regular  and  abundant  is  the  supply  of  food  and  clothing  — 
the  longer  is  the  duration  of  life,  and  the  more  continuous  and 
regular  is  the  motion  of  society  ;  and  the  greater  is  the  tendency 
towards  diminution  in  the  power  of  those  who  live  by  trade  and 
transportation,  and  towards  increase  in  the  freedom  of  man. 

Such  are  the  facts  observed  in  every  country  of  advancing 
civilization. 

Looking,  next,  to  those  of  advancing  barbarism,  we  find  that 
all  the  facts  are  directly  the  reverse  —  the  power  of  association 
declining  with  the  diminishing  diversity  of  employments  —  men 
becoming  more  and  more  limited  to  the  single  pursuit  of  scratch 
ing  the  earth  in  quest  of  food  —  the  rich  soils  being  more  and 
more  abandoned  —  food  becoming  more  scarce,  and  famines  and 
pestilences  more  frequent — commerce  declining — trade  becoming 


460  CHAPTER   XIX.    §  2. 

more  and  more  the  master  of  the  fortunes  of  the  poor  cultivators 

—  population  diminishing  —  the  chain  of  society  becoming  more 
and  more  deficient  in  its  connecting  links — and  society  itself  tend 
ing  more  and  more  to  take  upon  itself  a  form  similar  to  that  now 
seen  existing  among  savage  tribes,  by  whom  the  disease  of  over 
population  is  most  experienced. 

§  2.  In  the  first  of  the  cases  above  described,  the  tax  of  trans 
portation  steadily  declines,  with  constant  increase  in  the  utility  of 
the  rude  products  of  the  earth,  and  as  constant  diminution  in  the 
value  of  commodities  required  for  the  uses  of  man.  In  the  last, 
that  tax  as  regularly  increases,  with  constant  decline  in  the  utility 
of  the  raw  material,  and  increase  in  the  value  of  food,  clothing, 
and  other  necessaries  of  life. 

In  the  first,  land  becomes  more  and  more  divided,  with  growing 
tendency  to  its  cultivation  by  the  man  who  owns  it,  and  to  the 
creation  of  local  centres — facilitating  the  combination  of  men  with 
their  fellow-men,  and  increasing  the  demand  for  their  various 
faculties.  In  the  last,  the  land  becomes  more  and  more  consoli 
dated,  with  constantly  increasing  tendency  to  having  the  work  of 
cultivation  performed  by  hired  laborers  —  towards  the  creation  of 
a  body  of  absentee  proprietors  —  and  towards  the  disappearance 
of  local  centres,  and  the  establishment  of  a  single  centre  of  action 

—  thus  lessening  the  facilities  of  association,  and  diminishing  the 
demand  for  the  exercise  of  mental  power. 

In  the  first,  the  prices,  or  money  values,  of  the  rude  products 
of  the  earth,  and  those  of  finished  commodities,  tend  steadily 
towards  closer  approximation  —  with  constant  increase  in  the 
productiveness  of  labor,  and  in  the  laborer's  proportion  of  the 
augmented  product ;  and  constant  decrease  in  that  remaining  for 
the  persons  who  stand  between  the  men  who  produce  and  those 
who  need  to  consume.  In  the  last,  those  prices  tend  to  recede 
from  each  other,  with  decline  in  the  productive  power,  and  dimi 
nution  in  the  laborer's  share  of  the  diminished  product. 

In  the  first,  the  labor  of  the  present  is  obtaining  a  constant  in 
crease  of  power  over  the  accumulations  of  the  past.  In  the  last, 
the  accumulations  of  the  past  are  obtaining  greater  power  over 
the  labor  of  the  present. 

In  the  first,  the  forces  of  nature  become  centred  in  THE  MAN, 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        461 

whose  value  increases  from  year  to  year,  and  who  becomes  from 
day  to  day  more  free.  In  the  last,  nature  acquires  power  over 
man,  whose  value  diminishes  from  day  to  day,  as  he  becomes  more 
and  more  enslaved. 

In  the  first,  the  circulation  is  rapid,  with  constant  tendency  to 
have  society  assume  that  form  in  which  strength  and  beauty  are 
most  combined  —  that  of  a  cone,  or  pyramid.  In  the  last,  the 
circulation  becomes  from  day  to  day  more  languid,  and  society 
tends  to  assume  that  form  which  is  least  consistent  with  either 
strength  or  beauty  —  that  of  an  inverted  pyramid. 

§  3.  Looking  to  Greece,  in  the  days  of  Solon,  we  observe  the 
first  of  the  sets  of  phenomena  above  described  —  a  rapid  circula 
tion  of  society,  accompanied  by  division  of  the  land — by  the  crea 
tion  of  local  centres — by  a  constant  growth  in  the  power  of 
association  and  combination  —  by  a  wonderful  development  of 
intellectual  power — and  by  the  enfranchisement  of  man.  Looking 
to  it,  next,  in  the  days  of  Pericles  and  his  successors,  we  find  the 
circulation  becoming  more  languid  —  the  land  becoming  consoli 
dated — the  local  centres  diminishing  in  importance,  while  a  great 
central  city  rises  on  their  ruins  —  the  demand  for  intellectual 
faculty  declining  —  pauperism  increasing  from  year  to  year,  and 
producing  a  necessity  for  colonization  —  and  free  citizens  being 
re-enslaved. 

Turning  next  to  Italy  in  the  days  when  the  Campagna  afforded 
food  to  the  inhabitants  of  its  numerous  cities,  we  see  a  reproduc 
tion  of  the  facts  of  early  Greece.  Studying  it  in  the  days  of 
Pompey  and  Caesar,  we  find  property  in  land  to  have  become 
everywhere  consolidated,  and  its  owners  to  have  become  absentee 
proprietors,  residents  of  a  great  city  filled  with  paupers  and 
owned  by  traders  in  men  and  money ;  the  local  centres  to  have 
so  far  diminished  in  importance  that  they  almost  cease  to  be 
known  to  history ;  the  circulation  of  society  almost  to  have  dis 
appeared  ;  the  demand  for  intellectual  faculty  to  have  been  super 
seded  by  that  for  mere  brute  force,  to  be  employed  in  extending 
the  field  of  operation  —  and  thus  replacing  the  already  exhausted 
Italy  and  Sicily  by  the  yet  unexhausted  fields  for  plunder  pre 
sented  by  Asia  and  by  Africa. 

Looking  next  to  the  British  islands,  we  see,  during  a  long  course 


462  CHAPTER   XIX.    §  3. 

of  centuries,  facts  similar  to  those  observed  in  early  Greece  and 
Italy  —  the  circulation  of  society  increasing  with  the  gradual  in 
crease  in  the  variety  of  employments  —  the  local  centres  growing 
in  number  and  in  importance — the  land  becoming  more  and  more 
divided — the  power  of  association  and  combination  steadily  aug 
menting — and  man  becoming  everywhere  more  free. 

Turning  thence  to  the  British  empire  of  the  present  day,  we 
see  landed  property  becoming  more  and  more  consolidated  — 
its  owners  more  and  more  becoming  absentees  —  and  its  cities 
becoming  more  and  more  crowded  with  paupers,  and  more 
and  more  becoming  the  property  of  traders  in  men  and  money ; 
while  everywhere  the  local  centres  are  declining  in  importance  — 
everywhere  the  circulation  of  society  becomes  more  languid  — 
everywhere  the  demand  is  made  for  those  additions  to  population 
which  consist  in  the  mere  brute  force  required  to  serve  the  pur 
poses  of  those  who  live  by  the  exercise  of  their  powers  of  appro 
priation  —  and  every  day  exhibits  an  increased  necessity  for  new 
fields  of  action  to  take  the  place  of  the  ruined  Portugal,  the 
almost  extinct  Turkey,  the  exhausted  Ireland,  and  the  now 
rapidly  perishing  Indies  of  the  East  and  of  the  West. 

In  all  the  cases  of  advancing  civilization  above  presented  for 
the  reader's  consideration,  the  facts  were  one  and  the  same.  In 
all  those  of  declining  civilization,  the  evidences  of  such  decline 
are  precisely  similar.  In  all,  absenteeism  and  over-population 
are  seen  growing  in  due  proportion  to  each  other.  In  all,  the 
accumulations  of  the  past  acquire  an  increased  control  over  the 
labors  of  the  present.*  In  all,  the  proportion  of  society  engaged 
in  the  work  of  simple  appropriation  is  a  constantly  augmenting 
one.  In  all,  the  form  of  society  is  seen  passing  from  the  beauti 
ful  and  stable  one  of  the  true  pyramid  to  that  of  the  inverted  one. 
Will  the  end  in  all  prove  to  have  been  the  same  ?  In  answer,  we 
can  only  say  that  the  prosperity  of  a  community  based  upon  trade 
has  always  proved  to  be  a  very  fleeting  one ;  that  its  foundations 

*  See  ante,  p.  420,  for  the  assertion,  that  the  workman  is  "indebted  for 
being  employed  at  all"  to  the  losses  incurred  by  his  employer.  The  effect 
of  an  unsound  system  in  corrupting  the  modes  of  thought  was  never  more 
clearly  exhibited  than  in  the  document  from  which  that  extract  was  made. 
The  reasoning,  throughout,  in  reference  to  the  relation  of  employer  and 
employed,  is  precisely  the  same  with  that  we  find  in  the  journals  of  Carolina ; 
and  yet  that  document  was  published  by  order  of  the  British  House  of  Com 
mons! 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF    FORM.        463 

have  always  thus  far  proved  to  have  been  laid  "in  gold-dust  and 
sand  "  —  and  that  there  exists  no  reason  for  believing  that  which 
has  always  been  true  in  the  past  can  be  otherwise  than  true  in  the 
present,  or  will  prove  false  in  the  future. 

§  4.  The  theory  of  over-population  having  originated  in  Eng 
land,  and  thence,  too,  having  been  derived  the  supporting  one  of 
Mr.  Ricardo,  in  relation  to  the  occupation  of  the  earth,  it  ha? 
been  deemed  just  and  proper  to  study  carefully  the  English  sys 
tem,  with  a  view  to  ascertaining  to  what  extent  the  peculiar  policy 
there  attempted  to  be  established  has  tended  to  production  of  such 
serious  error  on  the  part  of  her  economists.  If  the  doctrines 
taught  in  the  English  school  are  right,  then  has  the  Creator  made 
a  serious  blunder — having  established  slavery  as  the  ultimate  con 
dition  of  a  vast  majority  of  the  human  race.  If,  on  the  contrary, 
they  are  wrong,  then  is  freedom  the  ultimate  lot  of  man,  and  then 
are  there  found  throughout  the  natural  laws  regulating  the  social 
system,  the  same  order,  beauty,  and  harmony  of  arrangement  we 
see  prevailing  everywhere  else  throughout  the  organic  and  inor 
ganic  world.  One  of  these  things  is  absolutely  and  universally 
true,  and  the  other  as  absolutely  arid  universally  false.  Either  an 
all- wise  Deity  has  made  a  mistake,  or  man  has  made  one,  and 
has  invented  a  theory  by  help  of  which  to  gloss  it  over. 

That  slavery  is  the  ultimate  tendency  of  the  Malthusian  system, 
will  be  obvious  to  the  reader  after  a  moment's  reflection  upon  the 
proposition,  that  in  the  natural  course  of  things  population  tends 
to  outrun  subsistence — men  tending  to  increase  in  geometrical  pro 
portion,  while  food  can  be  made  to  increase  only  in  an  arithme 
tical  one.  This  being  so,  then  the  man  who  owns  the  food-pro 
ducing  machine  must  become  the  master  of  those  whose  necessities 
require  that  they  should  use  it.  The  one  holds  the  key  of  the 
great  granary  of  nature,  and  the  other  must  pay  for  the  privilege 
of  entering  therein,  be  the  price  of  admission  what  it  may.  The 
doctrine  of  over-population  is,  therefore,  one  of  centralization, 
slavery,  and  death. 

That  this,  in  fact,  was  Mr.  Malthus's  own  view  of  the  case,  is 
proved  by  the  passage  in  which  he  tells  his  readers,  that  as,  ' '  by 
the  law  of  our  nature  which  makes  food  necessary  to  the  life  of 
man,  population  can  never  actually  increase  beyond  the  lowest 


464  CHAPTER   XIX.     §4. 

nourishment  capable  of  supporting  it,  a  strong  check  on  popula 
tion,  from  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  food,  must  be  constantly  in 
operation.  This  difficulty  must  fall  somewhere,  and  must  neces 
sarily  fall  in  some  or  other  of  the  various  forms  of  misery,  or  the 
fear  of  misery,  by  a  larger  portion  of  mankind. "  *  Mankind  are 
thus  subjected  to  a  constant  pressure,  forcing  their  numbers  up  to 
that  point  at  which  it  is  impossible  to  obtain  "the  lowest  nourish 
ment  ;"  and  at  which  misery  is  required  to  step  in,  and — by  thin 
ning  them  off — keep  them  within  the  limits  of  the  supply  of  food. 
Under  such  circumstances,  there  can  be  no  law  but  that  of  force — 
the  man  who  is  strong  of  arm,  or  of  intellect,  enslaving  his  neigh 
bor  who  is  weak  in  these  respects ;  and  doing  so  in  virtue  of  the 
laws  of  God ! 

The  over-population  theory  originated  in  England,  in  the  midst 
of  an  appalling  state  of  pauperism,  and  it  finds  its  chief  support 
in  the  facts  furnished  by  the  British  empire.  Why  should  this  be 
so  ?  Because  the  English  policy  has  so  long  looked  steadily  to 
the  augmentation  of  that  great  obstacle  to  the  progress  of  man 
which  results  from  the  necessity  for  effecting  changes  in  the  place 
of  matter.  Wherever  that  obstacle  most  exists  the  supply  of  food 
is  least,  and  population  is  most  superabundant.  As  it  diminishes, 
the  supply  of  food  increases,  man  acquires  a  higher  value,  and  it 
comes  more  and  more  to  be  recognised  that  the  treasures  of  nature 
are  infinite  in  extent  —  waiting  only  the  demand  for  their  pro 
duction. 

It  is  precisely  as  that  obstacle  is  removed  that  the  prices  of  raw 
materials  and  of  finished  commodities  tend  more  and  more  to  ap 
proximate — thus  furnishing  the  most  perfect  evidence  of  advancing 
civilization.  As  they  come  more  and  more  together,  the  power 
of  the  laborer  over  nature,  and  over  himself,  increases,  but  the 
power  of  other  men  over  him  as  steadily  declines ;  and  thus  does 
he  pass  from  the  condition  of  slave  to  that  of  freeman.  The  Eng 
lish  system  having  for  its  base  the  idea  of  cheap  land,  cheap  labor, 
cheap  cotton,  cheap  corn,  and  dear  cloth  and  dear  iron,  the  more 
it  is  carried  out,  the  greater  is  the  tendency  towards  a  decline  in 
the  power  of  man  over  nature — towards  his  subjection  to  the  will 
of  his  fellow-man  —  and  towards  the  verification  of  the  Maltha- 

*  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population,  book  1,  chap.  i. 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        465 

sian  theory,  in  virtue  of  which  man  becomes  necessarily  the  hewer 
of  wood  and  the  drawer  of  water  for  his  fellow-man. 

§  5.  The  one  great  characteristic  of  the  laws  of  nature  is,  that 
they  act  always  in  one  direction.  Having  ascertained  that  the 
law  of  gravitation  is  true  in  regard  to  the  apple  now  falling  from 
the  tree,  it  becomes  safe  to  assume  that  it  is  equally  so  in  reference 
to  all  the  planets  of  which  our  system  is  composed,  and  that  it  has 
governed  the  movements  of  all  the  apples  that  have  ever  fallen, 
and  will  govern  all  that  ever  will  fall,  however  long  may  be  the 
duration  of  the  earth.  Admitting  the  case  to  be  the  same  with 
the  laws  controlling  the  movements  of  man,  and  seeing  that  in  the 
earliest  periods  of  society  he  is  very  poor  and  miserable,  while  in 
later  ones  he  becomes  stronger  and  more  able  to  command  sup 
plies  of  food,  it  follows,  necessarily,  that  his  power  to  command 
the  services  of  nature  must  steadily  increase,  as  he  becomes  more 
enabled  to  combine  his  efforts  with  those  of  his  neighbor  man. 

That  such  is  the  tendency  in  the  early  ages  of  society,  is  admitted 
by  all  —  food  then  becoming  more  abundant  as  men  increase  in 
numbers,  and  are  more  and  more  enabled  to  work  in  combination 
with  each  other.  Having,  however,  reached  some  certain  point, 
the  law,  according  to  Mr.  Malthus,  turns  round,  and,  with  every 
step  in  the  further  progress  of  population  and  of  wealth,  food  be 
comes  more  scarce — requiring  that  a  portion  of  the  occupants  of 
the  land  should  "  regularly  die  of  want ;  "*  as  the  savages  of  the 
early  period  had  done.f 

This,  as  the  reader  will  now  observe,  exactly  represents  what 
has  been  the  course  of  events  in  Ireland,  in  Jamaica,  in  India,  in 
Portugal,  and  in  Turkey;  and  also,  that  which  was  the  course  in 
England  at  the  date  of  Mr.  Malthus 's  work,  when  property  in  the 
land  was  just  beginning  to  be  consolidated ;  and  when  the  pro- 

*  MILL  :   Elements  of  Political  Economy,  p.  16. 

•f-  "After  a  certain,  and  not  very  advanced,  stage  in  the  progress  of  agri 
culture;  as  soon,  in  fact,  as  men  have  applied  themselves  to  cultivation  with 
any  energy,  and  have  brought  to  it  any  tolerable  tools;  from  that  time,  it  is 
the  law  of  production  from  the  Innd,  that  in  any  given  state  of  agricultural 
knowledge,  by  increasing  the  labor,  the  produce  is  not  increased  in  an  equal 
degree ;  doubling  the  latter  does  not  double  the  former ;  or,  to  express  the 
same  idea  in  other  words,  every  increase  of  produce  is  obtained  by  a.  more  than 
proportional  increase  in  the  application  of  labor  to  the  land.''' — J.  S.  MILL,  Prin 
ciples,  vol.  i.,  p.  212. 


4G6  CHAPTER   XIX.    §  6. 

perism  that  has  since  become  so  frightful  had  begun  to  show  its 
head.  Seeing  these  things,  it  would  seem  to  be  obvious  that  his 
theory  is  merely  to  be  regarded  as  descriptive  of  what  had  been, 
and  what  were  bound  to  be,  the  effects  of  an  unsound  course  of 
human  action,  but  erroneously  regarded  as  the  necessary  conse 
quence  of  divine  laws. 

§  6.  So,  too,  is  it  with  the  Ricardo-Malthusian  law  of  the 
occupation  of  the  earth,  in  virtue  of  which  man  commences  with 
the  rich  lands,  and  then  obtains  food  in  abundance,  but  in  course 
of  time  finds  himself  compelled  to  resort  to  soils  yielding  less  and 
less  in  return  to  labor  —  and  enabling  the  land-owner  to  claim  a 
constantly  increasing  proportion,  under  the  name  of  rent.  Such 
being  the  law,  the  laborer  becomes  of  necessity  the  bond  slave  — 
the  hewer  of  wood  and  drawer  of  water  —  to  the  man  who  claims 
to  own  the  land.  That  such  is  the  inevitable  result,  cannot  for  a 
moment  be  doubted  by  any  one  who  believes,  with  Mr.  McCul- 
loch,  that,  ' '  from  the  operation  of  fixed  and  permanent  causes, 
the  increasing  sterility  of  the  soil  is  sure,  in  the  long  run,  to  over 
match  the  improvements  that  occur  in  machinery  and  agriculture" 
—  man  thus  becoming  more  and  more  the  slave  of  nature,  whose 
representative  —  the  land-owner — holds  the  key  by  help  of  which 
alone  her  gifts  can  be  obtained. 

Man  becomes  more  free  as  the  labor  of  the  present  acquires 
power  over  the  accumulations  of  the  past  —  and  less  free  as  they 
acquire  power  over  him.  If  the  Ricardo  theory  is  true,  then  is 
slavery  provided  for  by  the  laws  of  God,  and  then  must  every 
effort  at  the  enfranchisement  of  man  prove  to  have  been  made  in 
vain. 

That  theory  involves,  necessarily,  the  separation  of  men  from 
their  fellow-men,  in  search  of  distant  and  fertile  lands ;  and  yet, 
separate  as  they  may,  the  original  curse  still  follows  them —  "  the 
increasing  sterility  of  the  soil  being  sure  to  overmatch"  any  im 
provements  they  may  make.  The  utility  of  the  materials  of  which 
the  earth  is  composed  must  diminish — the  value  of  the  commodi 
ties  required  by  man  must  increase  —  and  the  value  of  man  him 
self  must  decline  ;  while  the  necessity  for  the  service  of  the  trader 
and  transporter  must  be  a  constantly  augmenting  one.  The  more 
their  services  are  required,  the  greater  must  be  the  differences 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        467 

between  the  prices  of  raw  products  and  finished  commodities ; 
and  the  greater  must  be  the  tendency  towards  that  state  of  things 
in  which  might  makes  right  —  that  one  in  which  barbarism  takes 
the  place  of  civilization.  Look  to  the  doctrine  from  what  point 
we  may,  it  carries  man  so  certainly  towards  slavery,  that,  were  it 
true,  it  would  be  folly  to  undertake  resistance. 

§  7.  Happily  for  man,  history  tells  a  story  widely  different  from 
that  of  Mr.  Malthus.  All  that  is  by  him  depicted  as  a  conse 
quence  of  increase  of  numbers,  is  precisely  what  we  see  to  have 
existed  in  the  past,  when  population  was  small,  and  when  men 
could  occupy  at  will  either  the  lands  of  the  hills,  or  those  of  the 
valleys  —  when  no  man  had  property  in  either  —  and  when  none 
could  demand  rent ;  but  when  all-powerful  nature  forbade  the  oc 
cupation  of  the  lower  and  richer  lands,  and  limited  the  labors  of 
man  to  those  of  the  poor  ones  of  the  hills.  Such  having  been  the 
case,  and  man  having  steadily  acquired  power  as  the  result  of  that 
combination  which  could  come  only  with  increase  of  numbers, 
it  would  seem  very  clear  that  these  theories  could  be  entitled  to 
no  consideration  whatsoever ;  unless,  indeed,  it  were  possible  for 
us  to  conclude  that  the  Creator  had  instituted  laws  that  were  to 
work  at  one  time  forward,  and  at  another  backward — at  one  time 
up,  and  at  another  down  —  while  instituting,  in  relation  to  all 
other  matter,  laws  which  work  so  invariably  in  one  direction,  that 
having  once  determined  what  it  is,  man  feels  himself  entirely  safe 
in  assuming  that  such  it  has  been  in  all  the  times  that  are  past, 
and  that  such  it  will  be  in  all  that  are  to  come.  That  the  Crea 
tor  could  have  instituted  such  a  system  —  that  he  could  so  have 
acted  towards  the  being  he  had  placed  at  the  head  of  creation  — 
is  an  idea  so  absurd  as  almost  to  warrant  us  in  hesitating  to  cre 
dit  that  those  by  whom  it  was  first  suggested  could  really  them 
selves  have  believed  therein  ;  and  yet  not  a  doubt  that  they  really 
and  honestly  did  so  can  now  be  entertained.  What,  however, 
could  have  been  the  cause  of  the  error  into  which,  men  of  high 
intelligence  as  they  undoubtedly  were,  they  fell  ?  To  obtain  a 
reply  to  this  question  we  must  here  briefly  review  the  tendencies 
of  the  system  as  exhibited  in  the  several  countries  to  which  refer 
ence  has  above  been  made. 

What,  in  the  first  place,  were  the  objects  sought  by  it  to  be 


468  CHAPTER   XIX.     §  7. 

accomplished  ?  Did  it  look  to  the  promotion  of  association  and 
combination  ?  Did  it  look  towards  the  development  of  the 
powers  of  man  ?  Did  it  look  to  the  development,  or  even  to  the 
maintenance,  of  the  powers  of  the  earth  ?  Did  it  seek  to  lessen 
that  greatest  of  all  the  obstacles  standing  in  the  way  of  commerce, 
the  tax  of  transportation  ?  Did  it,  in  any  manner,  tend  to  in 
crease  the  utility  of  the  matter  of  which  the  earth  is  composed  — 
to  diminish  the  value  of  the  commodities  required  for  the  uses  of 
man — or,  to  increase  the  value  of  man  himself  ?  If  such  were  its 
objects,  then  did  it  tend  towards  civilization. 

That  it  did  none  of  these  things  we  know.  It  sought  to  pre 
vent  association.  It  prohibited  diversity  of  employments,  and 
thus  forbade  the  development  of  mind,  and  the  growth  of  the 
power  of  combination.  It  reduced  the  people  subject  to  it  to  the 
condition  of  mere  tillers  of  the  soil  —  while  enforcing  the  exhaus 
tion  of  the  land.  All  of  these  phenomena  are  those  which  attend 
the  early  ages  of  society  —  those  ages  that  we  denominate  barba 
ric  —  those  in  which  food  is  obtained  with  greatest  difficulty  — 
those  in  which  famines  and  pestilences  abound  —  and  those  in 
which  the  disease  of  over-population  most  exists.  The  system 
tended  towards  the  reduction  of  the  supply  of  the  necessaries  of 
life ;  and  therefore  is  it  that  we  find  in  Ireland,  India,  and  Ja 
maica  the  most  conclusive  evidences  of  the  truth  of  the  doctrines 
of  the  English  school.  It  was -a  retrograde  policy,  tending  to 
cause  a  return  of  society  to  that  state  of  barbarism  from  which 
it  had  emerged ;  and  therefore  was  a  retrograde  theory  required 
to  enable  those  who  sought  to  profit  by  it,  to  account  for  the 
diseases  of  which  it  was  itself  the  cause.  That  theory  was 
supplied  by  Messrs.  Malthus  and  Ricardo,  who  gave  us  laws 
of  God  by  help  of  which  to  account  for  famines,  pestilences, 
and  slavery,  that  were  but  the  necessary  result  of  the  miscon 
duct  of  man. 

Such  was  the  origin  of  that  modern  political  economy  which  so 
entirely  repudiates  the  ideas  of  Adam  Smith,  and  finds  in  trade 
the  substitute  for  commerce.  Retrograde  throughout,  it  requires 
that  we  should  at  once,  and  for  ever,  ignore  the  existence  of  an 
all-wise  and  all-benevolent  Deity,  and  put  our  trust  in  a  Being  by 
whom  had  been  instituted  great  natural  laws  in  virtue  of  which 
men  should  necessarily,  and  ' '  regularly,  die  of  want. " 


OF    MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF    FORM.        469 

Retrograde  throughout,  it  teaches — 

That,  in  the  early  stages  of  society,  as  the  first  miserable  tools 
are  obtained,  by  means  of  which  to  work,  men  are  enabled  to 
compel  the  earth  to  yield  larger  rewards  to  labor ;  but,  that,  as 
soon  as  they  ' '  have  applied  themselves  to  cultivation  with  any 
energy,  and  have  brought  to  it  any  tolerable  tools,"  *  a  new  law 
supervenes,  in  virtue  of  which  the  return  to  labor  becomes  yearly 
smaller  than  before. 

That,  although  the  progress  towards  civilization  has  every 
where  been  marked  by  an  increase  in  the  power  of  man  over  mat 
ter,  there  exist  "fixed  and  permanent  causes"  why  matter  must 
everywhere,  and  under  all  circumstances,  obtain  greater  power 
over  man. 

That,  although  the  value  of  man  had  everywhere  increased,  as 
the  value  of  the  commodities  required  for  his  use  has  diminished, 
the  true  road  of  progress  is  to  be  found  in  the  direction  of  in 
creased  use  for  ships  and  wagons,  because  in  their  use  is  to  be 
found  the  greatest  increase  in  the  value  of  those  commodities 

That,  although  men  have  everywhere  become  more  free  as  em 
ployments  have  become  more  diversified,  and  as  the  utility  of  the 
various  kinds  of  matter  has  become  more  and  more  developed,  the 
road  of  progress  lies  in  the  division  of  nations  into  agricultural 
and  manufacturing  ones — the  single  workshop  being  thousands  of 
miles  distant  from  the  places  at  which  the  materials  are  produced. 

That,  although  man  has  always  thriven  in  the  precise  ratio  in 
which  the  price  of  the  raw  material  has  approximated  that  of  the 
commodity  manufactured  from  it,  his  further  progress  is  to  be  in 
creased  by  the  adoption  of  a  policy  looking  to  cheapening  'the 
raw  materials  and  increasing  the  quantity  thereof  required  to  be 
given  for  the  finished  article. 

That,  although  he  has  always  acquired  value  with  the  growth 
of  commerce,  and  with  decline  in  the  necessity  for  trade  and  trans 
portation,  his  condition  must  be  improved  by  establishing  the 
supremacy  of  trade. 

That,  although  progress  had  always  been  marked  by  increase 
in  the  power  of  labor  over  capital,  it  is  now  required  that  "labor 
should  be  abundant  and  cheap,"  in  order  that  it  maybe  kept 
"  sufficiently  under  the  control  of  capital." 

*  J.  S.  MILL  :  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  vol.  i.  p.  212. 


470  CHAPTER   XIX.     §  8. 

Such  being  the  tendency  of  all  its  teachings,  it  is  no  matter  of 
surprise  that  modern  English  political  economy  sees  in  man  only 
an  animal  that  will  procreate,  that  must  be  fed,  and  that  can 
be  made  to  work  —  an  instrument  to  be  used  by  trade ;  that  it 
repudiates  all  the  distinctive  qualities  of  man,  and  limits  itself  to 
the  consideration  of  those  he  holds  in  common  with  the  beast  of 
burden  or  of  prey ;  that  it  denies  that  the  Creator  meant  that 
every  man  should  find  a  place  at  his  table,  or  that  there  exists 
any  reason  why  a  poor  laborer,  able  and  willing  to  work,  should 
have  any  more  right  to  be  fed  than  the  cotton-spinner  has  to  find 
a  market  for  his  cloth ;  or  that,  as  the  reader  has  already  seen,  it 
assures  its  students  that  "  labor  is  a  commodity, "  and  that  if  men 
will  marry  and  have  children  without  having  previously  made 
provision  for  them,  it  is  for  them  to  take  their  chance  —  and  that 
' '  if  we  stand  between  the  error  and  its  consequences ,  we  stand 
between  the  evil  and  its  cure — if  we  intercept  the  penalty,  (where 
it  does  not  amount  to  positive  death,)  we  perpetuate  the  sin."  * 

§  8.  Adam  Smith  knew  nothing  of  any  such  "dismal  science" 
as  that  above  described.  Having  full  faith  in  the  advantages  of 
commerce,  he  held  in  great  contempt  the  system  based  upon  the 
idea  of  converting  a  whole  nation  into  a  mass  of  mere  traders  in 
the  products  of  other  lands.  Believing  that  "  the  one  thing 
needful  was,  obviously,  to  make  land  yield  the  largest  possible 
surplus,"  he  favored  its  division,  because  "small  farms,"  as  he 
saw,  could  "afford  a  greater  surplus  than  similar  portions  of  a 
larger  one;"  and  because  his  eyes  had  not  been  opened  to  the 
imaginary  fact,  that  consolidation  of  landed  property  "  raises  uni 
versally  the  standard  of  competence,  and  gives  force  to  the  springs 
which  set  industry  in  motion,  "f  Had  that  idea  been  suggested 
to  him,  he  would  probably  have  inquired  why  it  had  been  that,  in 
all  other  countries,  such  consolidation  had  been  the  companion 
of  depopulation,  slavery,  and  moral  and  political  death. 

A  firm  believer  in  the  equal  rights  of  man,  he  was  as  little  able 
to  see  the  justice  of  prohibition  of  commerce  among  the  colonists,  J 

*  Edinburgh  Review,  October,  1849. 

f  MoCuLLOCH:  Principles,  p.  259. 

J  "To  found  a  great  empire  for  the  sole  purpose  of  raising  up  a  people  of 
customers  may  at  first  sight  appear  a  project  fit  only  for  a  nation  of  shop 
keepers.  It  is,  however,  a  project  altogether  unfit  for  a  nation  of  shop- 


OF   MECHANICAL   AND   CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF   FORM.        471 

as  he  would  now  be  to  discover  the  propriety,  or  the  advantage 
to  England  herself,  of  a  "warfare"  on  the  part  of  great  capital 
ists  at  home,  with  a  view  to  the  destruction  of  competition  at 
home  and  abroad.  Having  a  confident  belief  in  the  existence  of 
the  being  known  to  him  as  MAN  —  a  being  possessed  of  feelings 
and  affections  — he  held  in  great  admiration  the  "  small  proprie 
tor  who,"  knowing  "every  part  of  his  little  territory,  views  it 
with  all  the  affection  which  property,  especially  small  property, 
naturally  inspires ;  and  who,  on  that  account,  takes  pleasure  not 
only  in  cultivating,  but  in  adorning  it;"  and  he  would,  with 
scorn,  have  rejected  the  idea  of  the  modern  politico-economical 
man — a  being  that  sleeps,  eats,  and  procreates,  and  must  have  so 
much  wages  as  will  enable  him  to  supply  the  lowest  wants  of  his 
nature,  and  those  alone.  Seeing  clearly  that  "  the  most  advan 
tageous  employment  of  the  capital  of  the  country  to  which  it  be 
longs,  is  that  which  maintains  the  greatest  quantity  of  productive 
labor,  and  increases  most  the  annual  produce  of  the  land  and  labor 
of  that  country,"  he  held  in  small  respect  the  opinions  of  those  who 
saw  in  "foreign  trade"  the  only  index  to  prosperity;  and  in  as 
little  respect  would  he,  were  he  now  living,  hold  those  of  the  men 
who  see  in  the  import  of 

"The  wealth  of  climes,  where  savage  nations  roam, 
Pillaged  from  slaves  to  purchase  slaves  at  home," 

any  compensation  for  the  establishment  of  a  system  under  the  action 
of  which  "man"  becomes  "  a  drug,  and  population  a  nuisance." 
Holding  to  scarcely  a  single  opinion  in  common  with  that  modern 
political  economy  which  since  has  emanated  from  the  school  of 
England,*  it  is  little  matter  of  surprise  that  we  find  in  his  great 
work  no  evidence  of  his  belief  that  the  "misery"  described  by 
Mr.  Malthus  had  its  existence  in  virtue  of  any  of  the  laws  of  God 

keepers ;  but  extremely  fit  for  a  nation  whose  government  is  influenced  by 
shopkeepers."  —  Wealth  of  Nations,  book  4,  chap.  vii.  Of  the  measures  that 
had  been  adopted  with  a  view  to  carry  out  this  idea,  and  to  magnify  trade 
at  the  expense  of  commerce,  as  is  still  being  done,  Dr.  Smith  gave  his  opin 
ion  in  the  following  words:  —  "To  prohibit  a  great  people,  however,  from 
making  all  they  can  of  every  part  of  their  own  produce,  or  from  employing 
their  stock  and  industry  in  the  way  that  they  judge  most  advantageous  to 
themselves,  is  a  manifest  violation  of  the  most  sacred  rights  of  mankind  " — 
Ibid. 

*  The  chief  point  of  agreement  between  Dr.  Smith  and  his  followers  is  to 
be  found  in  his  chapters  on  Money,  where  he  was  most  in  error. 


472  CHAPTER   XIX.    §  9. 

—  that  that  great  and  beneficent  Being  had  provided  no  place  at 
his  table  for  important  portions  of  the  human  family  —  or  that  he 
believed  a  nation  was  to  be  enriched  by  such  an  extirpation  of 

"A  bold  peasantry — their  country's  pride" — 

as  has  since  taken  place  in  every  portion  of  the  United  Kingdom. 
Appreciating  fully  the  advantages  —  pecuniary  and  political, 
moral  and  social  —  resulting  from  commerce,  Dr.  Smith  saw 
clearly  that  it  increased  as  the  necessity  for  the  services  of  the 
transporter  diminished  —  as  the  men  engaged  in  effecting  those 
mechanical  and  chemical  changes  in  the  form  of  matter  required 
to  fit  it  for  man's  consumption,  more  and  more  took  their  places 
by  those  engaged  in  developing  the  treasures  of  the  earth,  and  in 
augmenting  the  quantity  of  raw  materials  requiring  to  be  con 
verted  ;  and  that  every  step  in  that  direction  was  attended  with 
diminution  in  the  value  of  commodities,  and  an  increase  in  the 
value  and  in  the  freedom  of  man.* 

§  9.  The  reader  may  now  readily  comprehend  the  simple  and 
beautiful  law  in  virtue  of  which  society  tends  gradually  to  assume 
the  form  described  in  a  former  chapter,  f 

Among  savages,  raw  material  is  low  in  price,  while  finished 
commodities  are  dear.  Among  civilized  men,  the  reverse  of  this 
is  true — raw  material  being  dear  and  finished  commodities  cheap. 
The  former  give  skins  that  have  cost  them  days,  in  exchange  for 

*  In  the  notes  to  Mr.  McCulloch's  edition  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations,  that 
gentleman  tells  his  readers  that  "it  would  be  inexcusable"  to  waste  their 
time  "by  endeavoring  to  prove,  by  argument,  the  advantage  of  having  sup 
plies  of  food  at  a  low  price.  To  facilitate  production,"  as  he  continues, 
"  and  to  make  commodities  cheaper  and  more  easily  obtained,  are  the  prin 
cipal  motives  which  stimulate  the  inventive  powers,  and  which  lead  to  the 
discovery  and  improvements  of  machines  and  processes  for  saving  labor  and 
diminishing  cost." — p.  520.  The  words  "price"  and  "cost"  are  here  treated 
as  if  thev  referred  to  the  same  idea ;  whereas,  the  one  refers  to  the  value  of 
corn  in  money,  and  the  other  to  its  value  when  measured  by  labor.  It  is 
precisely  as  "  the  inventive  powers"  become  stimulated,  that  the  former 
rises,  as  may  be  seen  by  a  comparison  of  Poland  with  France,  or  England 
of  the  days  of  George  I.  with  the  same  England  of  the  time  of  George  III. 
It  is  then,  however,  that  the  latter  falls,  as  may  be  seen  by  a  comparison  of 
France  of  the  present  time  with  France  of  the  days  of  Louis  XV.,  or  Eng 
land  of  the  present  day  with  the  England  of  those  of  the  Plantagenets.  The 
more  numerous  the  discoveries  and  "improvements  of  machines,"  the  less 
will  be  the  "cost"  of  food,  the  greater  will  be  its  tendency  to  a  rise  of 
"price;"  and  the  more  rapid  the  improvement  in  the  condition  of  man. 

f  See  ante,  p.  223. 


OF    MECHANICAL    AND    CHEMICAL   CHANGES   OF    FORM.        473 

knives  produced  by  the  labor  of  little  more  than  minutes.  The 
latter  receive  from  the  neighboring  miller  in  the  form  of  flour 
nearly  all  that  they  had  given  him  in  that  of  wheat. 

Between  these  two  conditions  of  society  there  are  many  stages, 
for  whose  illustration  we  give  the  following  figures  :  — 

Finished  commodity 10     10    10    10    10    10    10     10     10 

Cost  of  transportation  and  conver 
sion 987654321 

Raw  material 123456789 

We  have  here  a  rapid  increase  in  the  proportion  retained  by 
the  producer,  accompanied  by  corresponding  decrease  in  that 
going  to  the  payment  of  the  various  persons  engaged  in  the  works 
of  trade,  transportation,  and  conversion.  In  the  first,  the  latter's 
share  pays  for  the  labor  of  nine  times  as  many  persons  engaged 
in  the  work  of  cultivation  —  who  are,  of  course,  slaves  both  to 
nature  and  to  their  fellow-men.  In  the  last,  it  pays  for  the  labor 
of  only  one-ninth  as  many  men  ;  as  a  natural  consequence  of 
which,  the  slave  of  the  earlier  days  is  represented  by  the  freeman 
of  the  later  ones. 

Admitting,  now,  that  all  were  equally  paid  —  that  wages  in  all 
employments  were  the  same  —  society  would  tend  gradually  to 
take  the  forms  that  here  are  indicated  :  — 

Employed  in  trade,  trans 
portation,  and  conver 
sion 900  800  700  600  500  400  300  200  100 

Employed  in  developing 
the  resources  of  the 
earth 100  200  300  400  500  600  700  800  900 

1000  1000  1000  1000  1000  1000  1000  1000  1000 

The  form  of  society  thus  gradually  changes  from  the  top-heavy 
and  unstable  one  of  an  inverted  pyramid,  to  the  beautiful  and 
stable  one  of  a  true  pyramid  —  the  mass  of  the  physical  and 
mental  power  of  the  community  being,  in  the  last,  given  to  ef 
fecting  those  vital  changes  in  the  forms  of  matter,  which  result 
in  augmentation  of  the  quantity  of  things  to  be  consumed ;  while 
but  little  of  it  is  required  for  effecting  changes  in  the  places, 
forms,  or  ownership,  of  the  things  produced.  With  every 
stage  of  this  progress,  agriculture  becomes  more  and  more  a 

VOL.  L— 31 


474  CHAPTER    XIX.    §  9. 

science  —  the  men  employed  in  developing  the  resources  of  the 
earth  rise  in  the  scale  of  being — the  various  utilities  of  matter  are 
more  and  more  called  into  activity  . —  local  centres  are  created  — 
food  and  clothing  are  more  and  more  readily  obtained — and  man 
becomes  more  happy  and  more  free.  With  each,  mind  is  more 
and  more  stimulated  into  action  —  the  feelings  and  affections  are 
more  and  more  developed  —  and  man  becomes  from  year  to  year 
more  fitted  for  occupying  the  place  for  which  he  was  intended  — 
that  of  master  over  nature,  and  master  of  himself. 

Such,  under  a  natural  system,  are  the  results  of  an  increase  of 
population.  That  they  are  so,  is  shown  by  every  page  in  the  his 
tory  of  improving  nations.  That  Mr.  Malthas  should  so  have 
misrepresented  the  action  of  the  Creator  —  that  he  should  have 
made  slavery,  instead  of  freedom,  the  ultimate  condition  of  man 
kind  —  was  due  to  the  fact,  that  he  lived  in  the  midst  of  an  arti 
ficial  system,  whose  tendency  to  produce  the  enslavement  of  man 
is  being,  with  each  successive  day,  more  clearly  demonstrated.* 

*  In  a  recent  debate  in  the  House  of  Commons,  it  was  stated  that  in  the 
bleaching  establishments  of  both  England  and  Scotland,  men,  women,  and 
children  were  obliged  to  work  from  sixteen  to  twenty  hours  per  day,  and 
under  a  temperature  so  high  that,  not  unfrequently,  "  the  nails  in  the  floors 
became  heated,  and  blistered  the  feet  of  those  who  were  employed  in  the 
rooms  —  usually  called  'wasting  shops,'  because  of  the  extraordinary  de 
struction  of  life  of  which  they  are  the  cause."  To  remedy  these  evils,  and 
to  protect  the  work-people  —  especially  those  whose  tender  age  forbids  that 
they  should  protect  themselves,  and  whose  lives  are  now,  as  was  said  by  one 
of  the  speakers,  "being  expended  just  like  those  of  cattle  on  a  farm"  —  it 
was  proposed  to  limit  the  hours  of  employment :  but  the  bill  for  that  pur 
pose  was  rejected  after  a  speech  from  Sir  James  Graham,  in  which,  as  the 
reader  will  here  see,  the  laborer  is  regarded  as  a  mere  instrument  to  be 
used  by  trade : — 

"  It  is  admitted  that  the  bleaching  trade  is  exposed  to  the  most  severe 
competition  with  foreign  rivals,  and  that  it  requires  all  the  skill  and  energy 
of  the  British  manufacturer  successfully  to  contend  against  that  compe 
tition.  Just  as  in  a  race  where  two  horses  of  exactly  equal  powers  are  to 
run — if  you  put  three  pounds  extra  on  one  of  them,  his  defeat  is  certain :  so 
it  is  with  regard  to  this  trade.  Mr.  Tremenheere  admits  the  keenness  of 
this  competition,  but,  while  he  states  most  distinctly  that  if  you  follow 
his  advice,  the  additional  cost  of  production  will  be  10  per  cent.,  and  the 
addition  to  the  selling  price  1  per  cent.,  he  maintains  that  this  is  a  very 
trifling  matter  indeed.  That  is  so  astounding  a  proposition  in  a  matter  of 
trade,  that  I,  for  one,  cannot  consent  blindly  to  follow  Mr.  Tremenheere  as 
a  guide.  If  the  effect  should  be  as  he  states  —  to  add  10  per  cent,  to  the 
cost  of  production — I  predict  at  once  that  by  such  hasty,  wild,  and  extrava 
gant  legislation,  you  would  insure  the  success  of  our  foreign  rivals  in  this 
branch  of  trade." 


END    OP    VOL.    I. 


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